Three Kids Doing Well and Linn Has a Fit on a Turkey Vulture Again and Again and Again
July 03, 2016 - Scarborough - Yellow Pages
Tracy Simpson Reports:
When I arrived this morning I at first found no one in sight. I started a walkabout and after my first round of the building I found Lorraine up on the corner of the nest ledge looking the proud girl back home. It took me a few minutes to find baby number two over at the Investors Group on the far west side. I could just barely see a wee head poking out over the edge of the roof line. I watched Lorraine for about a half an hour and realized I had yet to see the adults. It wasn’t long after that thought that I could hear Linn before I heard her. Alarm calls were echoing off of the building as a Turkey vulture floated across the large parking lot to the west towards the south end of the nest building. The poor vulture had no idea that the wrath of Linn would be such a ripper of a time, literally. Linn intercepted the vulture as it was moving east across the Yellow Pages south parking lot. It made an unfortunate mistake and banked back towards the building. Strike one. Linn was riding like a bronco. It was coming down low and tried to make it back west towards Investors Group where at least one juvenile sat watching. Strike two. Linn smacked it pretty hard. The vulture then circled back east again and by this time Linn had had enough. She drove the vulture down to about 3 feet off of the ground and they were both headed straight at the tent where I sat. I ducked. They missed and the vulture went down in the Mastermind parking lot just east of my location. Um… …wow.
After this incredible display of protective motherhood I took a walk over to the Investors Group to find out who I had over there. As I got closer I could see a head and a tail. Yup, both ends at the same time!?! It took until I was almost right there to realize that I had not one but two juveniles sitting cheek to cheek! Velcro and Kojis were having a wonderful time together roosting, preening and sleeping. I left them to their moment and went back over to watch Lorraine as she is our weakest link. At about 11am she finally decided to take flight but it was just a short exploratory one. She flew from the nest ledge to the north side retaining wall at the top of the building. No big feat but still a good coordinated flight. I moved around to watch her on the north side when suddenly I heard juvenile howling. I looked up to find George flying past Investors Group with Kojis in hot pursuit. Much to my surprise, George pushed Kojis down onto the roof of the building as if to say, “You stay there now kid!”. George then flew back towards the nest building and that’s when Lorraine decided it was time for her grand entrance. She was intending to head over to the IG building as I could now see that Velcro had a chunk of food. Off came Lorraine and she headed west. George intercepted her in the air and turned her back. She flew back around to the south side of the nest building and disappeared from my sight for a second. Back around she came and she headed out north. George intercepted her once again and turned her back to the nest building where she landed on top of the retaining wall. Phew. It was a good minute and a half or more of air time for her and she handled it perfectly. She settled in and it was at that time that I headed out for the day leaving Mark and Marion to take over.
The first set of pictures are of Linn and her vulture followed by photos of the kids.
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