Turkey Talk

Let’s turn back the tick-tock (as in clock, not the viral video platform) by twelve years to today 2013 for turkey talk.

Remember this wonderful haiku-ish “American sentence” (also -ish!) from Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison’s cool collab, Braided Creek?

In a pasture, wild turkeys,
flip cow pies, looking for bugs.
— Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison
(Source: Braided Creek: a conversation in poetry via Braided Conversation)

No cow pies in the photo above since it’s our back lawn, located between our home’s deck and the carriage barn, but probably plenty of edible grubs just beneath the snow. The photo’s old, but the occurrence is commonplace. I talk plenty about our efforts to nurture and protect a wildlife sanctuary in Rosslyn’s backland. But often our wild neighbors venture nearer. We don’t encourage it, but who’s going tell a pack of turkeys to observe a fence line?!

The second photo, a close-up, captures a bit of the burly birds’ bearing. Big, confident, and hungry, they proceed as they please.

I’m reminded of the immense turkey that broke into Rosslyn while we were vacationing in the Caribbean some years ago. 

Turns out the… [turkey] was 23 pounds. Literally knocked an exterior door right out of the jamb… the alarm was tripped and the artillery arrived to sort through the giblets. NYS Troopers consider it one of the most unique break-ins they could remember. (Source: Kamikaze Wild Turkey: The Gallopavo Imbroglio)

Another turkey talk mystery involved a speckled eggshell a few years ago.

Many thanks to Katie Shepard for her sleuthing. She lead me to this comparison of eggs image which shows an egg that looks suspiciously similar to the shell I found. In the photograph, the brownish egg on the far left is from a guinea hen, and the egg on the far right if from a peafowl. But those two middle eggs are from turkeys. The larger turkey egg with well pronounced brown speckles is a ringer!

And given our high population of wild turkeys, even after the kamikaze turkey episode, it makes plenty of sense that this egg hatched a baby wild turkey. Just yesterday morning I startled four large turkey that were right next to our back deck, looking for breakfast among the zinnias. (Source: Mysterious Speckled Egg)

From a turkey burglar to a speckled turkey eggshell, these big birds make Rosslyn their home year around.

Despite the abundance of wild turkeys that make their home in our wildlife sanctuary I’ve never once come across a wild turkey nesting site. Clever fowl! (Source: Wild Turkey Nesting)

Turkey talk… Welcome to another backyard safari!