Watching the Turkeys
Sun., May 24, 12:41 PM
As you may know — I don’t think I posted about it — we have wild turkeys among the resident wildlife in this neighborhood. The deer and the turkeys are just the latest victims of urban development; if you build a house where animals used to live, they have to find somewhere else. They seem to find our yard, on the edge of the salt marsh, a convenient new home.
The first year, there was just one pair of turkeys. We didn’t pay them too much attention, until we realized that the female was leading around a line of babies. They were very cute, but we would not feed them. I hope we learned our lesson from the cats! As the babies got older, the mama brought them up on my deck to teach them how to fly.
I didn’t count them back then, but I’m willing to bet that a large percentage of them are alive and healthy. Maybe they’re stealing some of the food Mrs. Neighbor-Out-Back puts out for the cat colony. In any case, there have been a lot of more turkeys around, extremely noisy as the sun comes up. I looked outside and counted as many as a dozen sitting on my lawn.
So now I’ve learned a few things about turkeys. They spend the night in the tops of trees and come down during the day. I can usually tell the toms from the hens. They are noisiest in the spring, enough to wake even U.D., and that is probably because those young toms are trying to get it on. And I have seen and heard a mama standing and calling to her half-grown babies when they have strayed just a little too far.
It is very funny to watch the young fellows trying to spread their tail feathers and act grown up. I have watched two of them at one time trying to impress a hen who isn’t the least bit interested in either one. That scraping sound I have heard outside is a tom walking with the tail spread. When they’re still learning, they seem to have trouble keeping all the feathers off the ground when they spread their tails.
Now, I am not thrilled to have a turkey colony in my yard. They are not clean; even the cats found a layer of pine needles to use as a litter box. Taking care of the yard is hard enough without having to watch for turkey droppings in the grass or on the deck. They just don’t care. But why should they? They’re turkeys!
This is a time of year when there are extra tasks in the yard. My trees are dropping blossoms all over everything. I had to wash pollen off my windshield. I want to start cutting back more of the brambles too.
Yesterday I looked through the window and saw heaps of tree blossoms, as if someone had been raking. That is really strange; I can’t imagine anyone doing that for me. It was only half done, or I might have thought that Son had stopped by… (Son never leaves a job undone, even if it means he will be late starting on the next one.) Nevertheless, these piles would be easy to pick up, and I got a clean leaf bag to start collecting them.
This morning the mystery is solved. A tom turkey, dragging feathers, swept up the blossoms. I guess they are good for something. Too bad I can’t train them to rake leaves.
