Turkey vultures snooping around
June 19, 2015 - Kitchener - CTV-Bell Media Tower
Lisa Reh Reports:
Marg and Sarah were on the watch at 9:30 on Friday morning to find all 4 kids on the CTV Tower, 1 on the nest box and the other 3 on the top platform. The action started at 10:00, as the adults arrived and then left again with lots of flights back and forth from the tower to the hospital roofs above the H. Briefly, the entire family was sighted together but with all the action, it was too hard to keep track. By 11:00, Caster and Mystery were back on the Sun Life tower. Martha and Dale joined the watch and by 1:00 all 4 kids, were resting on the hospital roof behind the blue letter H.
At 5:30, Martha and Lisa were watching from various vantage points. There were at least 12 turkey vultures soaring over Mount Hope Street between the hospital and the Sun Life parking lot. One of the peregrines was soaring and screaming. Higher and higher it went and then started to dive bomb the turkey vultures. The other adult came out to go after the vultures but went out of sight shortly, probably to make sure the kids were all right. The remaining peregrine zoned in on one poor vulture and dive-bombed him again and again, making at least 4 or 5 direct hits. The vulture flew overtop of the hospital roof, close to the H and out of sight towards Park Street. On further inspection of the nest sight, at least 2 of the kids were on top of the tower, feeding on a gull which what was attracting all the vultures! The other vultures soared way up high and out of the peregrines attack zone. I left the nest site around 6:15 and the vultures were still snooping around. At 7:00, I saw one of the adults hunting over the Mount Hope Street cemetery, it circled higher and higher over the neighbourhood and went into a deep dive over the cemetery and I lost sight of it in the tree line.
I went back to the site at 7:30 and joined Martha. Chris joined us a little while later. From 8:15 - 9:00 there were lots of flights back and forth between the hospital and the tower. The adults came back and forth from the Sun Life tower and Caster brought a food drop in at 9:00 and flew back to Sun Life. All of the young ones returned to the tower, one landing a little awkwardly on the King Street side and another landed right on the drum right beside another and they snuggled in together. We left the watch at 9:15 knowing that all were safe and accounted for.
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