Nature is not bucolic. Animals attack one another with tooth, claw, and bill. Other species are seen as either food or competitor — in either case they must be attacked. I have watched animals assault prey. I have seen eagles harass ospreys in an attempt to steal their fish. I have seen ospreys attack herons (who knows why?). Spiders devoir flies. Bears and birds prey on fish. Everything captures and eats those tasty voles. It is just a matter of eat or be eaten. There is nothing personal here, folks: you are merely food.
While I have watched ospreys fight over access to a nest site early in the season, I had not previously seen them fight over a fish. But, that is what two of them were doing on this occasion.
A female osprey flies in with her partially eaten fish.
She lands on a branch to eat it further, but is watched by another osprey that covets the fish.
The chase begins. This is only one scene from a vigorous back and forth between the two of them.
In the end she triumphs and settles down to consume her fish.
Wild Turkey presence
When I was a child on the shore of Kootenay Lake, there were no Wild Turkeys to be seen.
Returning to the lakeshore in retirement, I was surprised to see a few. Since that time, the proliferation of turkeys is probably satisfying only to coyotes.
Why are they here? Apparently they were introduced in the states of Washington and Idaho as a way to satisfy hunters. Sigh….
A Washington website states: “wild turkeys … were introduced to Washington beginning in the early twentieth century.” These turkeys apparently did not head north. However, an Idaho website tells us that: “Wild turkey populations have taken off in Idaho since Idaho Fish and Game first introduced them in the 1960s.” It is a portion of this plantation that seems to have sought refuge around Kootenay Lake, for a few were apparently seen around Salmo later in that decade.
However, the purpose of this posting is merely to record a milestone in our history of the Wild Turkey. By an accident of the preservation of ephemera, I have a page from the BC Naturalist from the Spring of 1987 (Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 6) that notes: “West Kootenay Naturalists were excited to find two WILD TURKEYS near Nelson on 27 December.”
This event, over thirty years ago, was an early stage in our turkey infestation, all apparently a consequence of Idaho’s introduction.
