Black-headed vultures have been moving into Missouri for some time; I’ve seen coverage of them in the local papers, magazines, and probably Larry Dablemont’s columns for a couple of years now. And I know the problem is getting serious as the Missouri Department of Conservation has been running ads in the aforementioned sources (minus Dablemont) saying that if you black vultures are a problem on your property (they’re known to attack living livestock), you can get a permit to kill them (the vultures). I’m under the impression that livestock producers think that step is optional, but if the state is saying maybe it’s a problem, then it’s a bad problem already.
At any rate, I did not get a photo of them, but I did see a trio of them in a field along the farm road that becomes Miller Road in Republic while I was headed to the gym this morning.
And when I got home, I saw this pygmy emu:
I bet this is the same turkey (not turkey vulture, which is the native vulture known for its bald head like a turkey) who crossed my farm road ahead of me the other day.
It’s good to see a turkey as they’re fairly infrequent in my back yard. But it’s odd to see one by itself; usually, when we see them in the valley by the creek down the road aways, you see more than one at a time. Perhaps this is a tom. Larry Dablemont would know, and he would then tell you that their numbers are in fact decreasing and that the state of Missouri doesn’t care since it makes money from turkey hunting permits and they, the government people, tend to work from computer models about populations rather than actually spending a lot of time in the icky woods.
At any rate, just a couple of bird sightings here that are atypical.
