Sisters turkey vultures in the limelight

At last, our lowly turkey vultures are going to get the credit they deserve! For eons, these much maligned, "ugly things" have been cleaning up the dead and recycling offal without even a thank you.

A film crew from OPB's "Oregon Field Guide" has been in the Sisters area these past few days putting a turkey vulture show together.

Ed Jahn, producer of Oregon Field Guide, has collected footage of "TVs" for years, such as their night roost on the famous lookout tower at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and other locations around the state. Now, with the help of cameraman Nick Fisher, assistant Sarah Fox and yours truly he's ready to put in the finishing touches with the birds around Sisters.

Late afternoon hikers and riders starting out on the Peterson Ridge Trail near the Three Creeks Road noticed Nick cranking away at the 35 or so TVs soaring in to spend the night in the cottonwoods and big pines alongside the road. One curious resident stopped and asked, "Hey, are you guys photographing an owl?"

The people who parked their cars under the old roost trees near the firehall knew the TVs were there. Owners of the apartments near Nellie Zook's old place also knew they were there; they wanted them removed. Although TVs are irreplaceable in the removal and recycling of dead animals, they're not appreciated for their indiscriminate way of eliminating waste - which, incidentally, is sterile.

When the new fire hall was built the disturbance was a little too much for the TVs and they moved to their present night roost - and made a few people happy. However, those who enjoyed the air show the birds put on each morning and evening didn't like to see them go.

The turkey vulture, Cathartes aura, also known as the turkey buzzard (or "buzzard"), is found throughout most of the Americas, ranging from southern Canada to the tip of South America. It has reddish brown to black plumage, and adults have a featherless, purplish-red head and neck; and a short, hooked, ivory-colored beak. In the United States, Turkey vultures receive legal protection under the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

The turkey vulture is an excellent scavenger and feeds almost exclusively on carrion, locating its meals using its superb sense of smell while flying low enough to detect gases produced by the process of decay in dead animals. In flight, it uses thermals to move through the air, rarely flapping its wings.

It is while in the air that a TV can be called "elegant." There is only one other species of bird that can soar like (or perhaps better than) a TV: the white pelican. "What about eagles..." you ask?

Eagles weigh in at about nine pounds with a seven-foot wingspan and are bulky and awkward in the air compared to a six-pound TV with a wingspan of around six feet. They are a bag-of-bones and feathers with exquisite flying skills, and have been getting around in the air ever since their ancestors with a 35-foot wingspan first took to the air millions of years ago.

Progenitors of TVs, the Teratorns - the largest bird known to fly - are found as fossils in Argentina. Their smaller cousin, Teratorn merriami, with a mere 15-foot wingspan, has been found as fossils in the Willamette Valley. Today's almost extinct condors (undergoing successful reproduction programs in the West) are the largest living member of the clean-up crew, known in the scientific community to be in the family Cathartidae.

A near-cousin to TVs and condors is the black vulture of the southern climes.

TVs nests in caves, hollow trees, and other out-of-the-way dark places. They can find nesting habitat in the Sisters Country everywhere.

One spot stands out: Gobbler's Knob, near Black Butte Ranch. Each spring adult TVs generally raise two chicks each in the boulders around the summit, and feed the young by regurgitating offal (what a way to start life...). Knowing the area to be a good spot for filming the nesting sequence of OPB's film, we searched all over the knob for sites.

I must admit, at 80, it gave me a funny feeling to be all sweaty and smelly, climbing over the boulders, and watching adult TVs soaring overhead. They may have got the wrong idea from the way I moved and smelled...