First there were just a few, but for months, a flock of almost two dozen turkeys have taken roost at the NASA Ames Center in Mountain View, making a mess and even disrupting flights at the nearby Moffett Federal Field.
And while the scientists and staff at the NASA center are used to keeping their eyes skyward, as they contribute to space missions of all kinds, the earthbound problem has proven to be difficult to solve. Wild turkeys have been pecking at cars and windows, blocking traffic, leaving droppings around buildings and HVAC equipment and posing a threat to aircraft operations.
And they won’t go away.
Their presence is forcing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to try to trap and relocate the birds — a feat made more challenging than anticipated because people won’t stop feeding them food, despite a “no feeding the wildlife” policy on-site, according to USDA spokesperson Tanya Espinosa.
“This is kind of a unique situation,” said Ken Paglia, a spokesperson for California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is providing the ecological reserve for the turkeys’ new home. “In general, wild turkeys aren’t something we actively manage. If someone has a wild turkey in their front yard, our default isn’t to take it and relocate it somewhere else.”
Even before the pandemic, several birds would annually get into the NASA Ames campus. But their numbers have increased and and this year, nearly two dozen gobblers have made the NASA Ames center their home.
Now the nesting season is rapidly approaching and if the flock isn’t removed soon, then there will be baby turkeys to contend with.
In order to trap the birds, sites are being prepared with a corn bait for several weeks, in order to get the turkeys to flock to certain areas. A walk-in corral trap with a detachable funnel entrance is set up once the animals have come to the pre-bait trap for a few days in a row. After the turkeys make their way into the traps, the funnel will be put on so the birds can’t escape. The turkeys then undergo a blood draw, oral and cloacal swabs, are banded and their age and sex recorded. They’re then placed in turkey boxes to be transported to the the San Antonio Valley Ecological Reserve being managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Paglia added that CDFW is providing the relocation spot for the birds because they’re on federal land.
“Once the turkeys make it through the protocols, we’ll take them to our ecological reserve and then release them,” he said.
They’re hoping to move the turkeys in the next week or two so they can nest in the reserve.
“This will help ensure that the young turkeys don’t learn from older turkeys in regards to damaging cars and landscaping,” Espinosa added.
Before 2019, only around five to eight turkeys would make their way to and from Ames but their numbers started increasing in 2019 and reached 20 to 25 turkeys in 2020, according to NASA Ames spokesperson Rachel Hoover.
“We don’t know for sure where they initially came from,” Hoover said. “We suspect the females we see on-site lay their eggs near Steven’s Creek and bring their young into Ames.”
Hoover said that if the USDA isn’t successful at trapping all of the birds, a process expected to take at least a month, NASA will have to think of other options for them to stay at the center, depending on how many remain. Ideally though, Hoover said the birds will be taken to the reserve where they’ll be “able to continue to roam freely” about the grounds.
Source: www.mercurynews.com