Saturday, June 30, 2007

 

Turkeys in the Back Yard

Hah! Very funny. Not me, but real turkeys.

The hot dry weather isn't helping my raspberries at all. I've been checking them and, in their shaded nook at the back of the yard, next to the fence line, they have buds. The canes are drying out and the leaves curling. I was walking back to check them again today when I looked, and there, behind the canes, was a hen turkey. She hadn't spotted me so I turned around and started back toward the house. Hopefully, if she saw me and I was going the wrong way, she wouldn't dart to cover.

"There're turkeys in the back yard," I said as loudly as I thought I might trying to get Beverly's attention.

"What?"

"There're turkeys in the back yard."

I got back to the porch, found the binoculars, and turned in time to see a small chick saunter after the hen.

Beverly and I spent the next 20 minutes watching a flock of turkeys mosey around the back yard and the field behind our old house. To the best of our count, there was one definite male, a probable young male (another bird bigger than the hens), at least 4 hens, and up to 6 or 8 chicks. It was hard to count as they were never all in view at once. One of the reasons I'm guessing there was a young rooster present was that the bigger male spread his tail feathers in a grand display.

The flock was silent. We have heard turkeys all around us, especially across the road on the Hoover's place. This is the first time we've seen them in the open. I'm hoping they have taken residence in the woods between the back of our place and Highway 421 (Bald Knob Road). No one has spent much time in those woods for at least 30 or 40 years. Much of the area is a relatively steep hillside that slopes from our upland down to the highway. I know the ground-nesting birds in that area include whippoorwills (we hear them all the time). Now, maybe there are turkey.

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