Return to Turkey Vulture Count article.

Sung to the music of “Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico”

In fall of ‘99 we pitched a little tent
South of Highway 58, where sewer ponds vent
We took along binoculars, coffee and some tea
And counted Turkey Vultures flying o'er Tehachapi

The first year the count was often manned by Len Bitetti
who said the birds got up so high they looked just like confetti
He counted lots of buzzards, 20 thousand forty two
That was sure a lot and Len got burned out on it too

chorus:

We looked to the west, and the buzzards kept a comin'
Seemed like twice as many as there was awhile ago
We looked once more and saw about a thousand
Turkey Vultures soaring on their way to Mexico

The next year we got a lot of other folks involved
Club members had heard the count was fun and all
People were a’ wonderin' about our little group
Were we up there countin' trains just goin' round the loop?

Clark looked down the valley, north of Togowhagani
And watched the buzzards kettling to clear Tehachapi
He started shouting numbers and he started turning red
Gail stood by the spotting scope, shaking her head

Jean had fifty clipboards jotting numbers with great speed
Beryl had her lounge chair, she spotted 'em with ease
Ten power Jan saw ones no one else could see
All those Turkey vultures flying past Tehachapi

yep, 38 thousand 7 hundred forty - three that year!

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Well the next year found us back upon the hill
Christine, Richard and Gordon found they couldn't get their fill
The count started slow, but one day to our surprise
We counted FIVE THOUSAND TV’s darkening the skies

The next group of vultures didn’t take us by surprise
But when we tried to count them, we could not believe our eyes
Ed had said they'd spent the night, down at Mourning Cloak
We raised our binoculars, we got 'em in the scope

We followed those buzzards 'til they faded out of sight
Debbie and Karen swore they saw an Osprey in the flight
Janet brought Buster so the dog could have a try
at counting turkey vultures as they went soaring by

yeah, the little beast of buzzard bluff got good at it too, racked up
31,168!

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The next year Jean got a call, “Golden Eagle down”
Five cars full of birders headed out east of town
They stalked that grounded bird, got close enough to see
The Golden Eagle really was a juvenile T.V.

We called him “Junior”, Christy took him down to FACT
They checked him out and said it was OK to take him back
We freed him out at Mourning Cloak and threw him to the sky
Junior flapped and landed and he waddled down the drive

So Junior stayed at Mourning Cloak, a few days of vacation
He didn't have much interest in resuming the migration
But then he saw a kettle with a few of his young friends
So Junior left Ed's fountain and was never seen again

but hey, we saw 36,435 other buzzards that year anyway!

-chorus

Last year we’d groomed the site and mowed down all the weeds
the hill was lookin’ pretty, just as neat as it could be
But then we got a call from the owner of the site
there was a little detail that was givin’ him a fright

It seems that we’d be sitting in a major storm of hail
the size of golf balls, really! They were sure to make us pale.
It was such a bummer, the likes we’d never seen,
our count site had been turned into a putting green.

We searched throughout the area, we couldn’t find a site
that gave us something similar to our sewage pond delight
And so we had to give it up but as a consolation
An albino Turkey Vulture stopped by on migration

-chorus

Turkey Vultures pass throughout the Valley every fall
With very few observers, we still try to count them all
Some folks think we're snooty with our noses in the sky
But we’re counting Turkey Vultures as they go soaring by

-chorus