Yesterday, I casually presented a list of some predators of spawning kokanee. In addition to bears, I listed: eagles, ospreys, ravens, and gulls. Bert Port then added mallards, and while I suggested they snack on the eggs, these could also be considered to be kokanee, if fertilized.
While I hadn’t presumed that my list was exhaustive, I had not guessed that I would so quickly add — if not a predator — at least a kokanee scavenger.
This is one of five Turkey Vultures that were seen eyeing spawners from high in the trees. Vultures find meals by the odour of rotting flesh — something unmistakable along the spawning channel.
May I suggest an additional predator species? Numerous American dippers feast on Kokanee eggs late in the spawning season at the mouth of Harvey Creek at the south end of Sullivan Lake in Washington – it is a treat to hear these usually solitary and silent songbirds trill and call – and to witness twenty or more working the stream at one time is memorable. We usually see the spawning Kokanee in late October. You are seeing them now?
Here north of Spokane we witnessed about 40-50 Turkey vultures getting ready to roost last Saturday – some flying low, some landing for the night. Both hatch year and adults birds in the migration flock. Seemed they all favored the same fir tree.
(Several years in a row the vultures have nested and raised their young at the base of a basalt cliff on our land.)
Do you know the Robinson Jeffers poem, Vulture? One of my favorites!
Tina