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Misfits – Incorrectly Fit Harnesses Led to Turkey Vultures Shedding Their Transmitters!
When a Turkey Vulture’s transmitter is sending signals from the same location hour after hour, it’s an indication that either the bird has died or he/she has rid themselves of the unit. We feared the worst when signals from the transmitters on vultures Amelia, Caeden and Glenn – shown below – weren’t changing locations. With […]
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Third Turkey Vulture Sheds a Transmitter!
April 29, 2023 Coastal Raptors attached a transmitter and a wing-tag to a Turkey Vulture at the Ocean Shores Municipal Airport. Afterwards GPS fixes indicated that this vulture, with tag ID CM and named Caeden, had moved to forestland three miles northeast of the airport. Telemetry signals showed his presence there up to May 11, […]
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Shoalwater DNR Locates Vulture-Shed Transmitter!
April 30, 2023. Ocean Shores Muncipal Airport. Coastal Raptors trapped a Turkey Vulture for a research project on the movement ecology of this very important scavenger species (for an overview of the study, go to Turkey Vulture Tracking). Trouble began one week afterward. At the time of her May 20 observation, Cyndie was conducting a […]
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You Win Some, You Loose Some
April 29, 2023: Ocean Shores Muncipal Airport Coastal Raptors began monitoring the health of avian scavengers on the Pacific coast in 2011. This effort involves capturing Bald Eagles, Turkey Vultures and Common Ravens for tissue sampling ahead of lab tests for pathogen and contaminant exposure. This day we trapped a Bald Eagle with a severe […]
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Is This Your Bird?
On May 1, 2023 I received an email from David Estroff of Gig Harbor, Washington with “Is this your bird” as the subject. I knew immediately that his email was going to be about a banded bird. I hoped that it would be one of mine and it was! David was birding on Grays Harbor […]
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Monitoring Gyrfalcon Nesting in Norway
On June 3 good friend and long-time Coastal Raptors volunteer Dave Murnen and I departed Washington for an adventure that took us first to Iceland for several days of sightseeing, then on to Norway for fieldwork with Gyrfalcons. There we joined Kenneth Johansen and others to monitor Gyrfalcon nesting. Many thanks to Kenneth for hosting […]
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Beginning
Welcome all raptor fans to Bird Man Dan’s Blog! Thanks for joining me on my adventures, study, and love of raptors. You have found your way to the first blog post of the newly re-launched Coastal Raptors website, now powered by WordPress 2022. Today, I want to tell the story of just how our re-designed […]
