I’ve seen wild turkeys in Massachusetts before, but never where I live. A wild turkey has started hanging out near our house. Some of the local kids started chasing it, and it turned and chased them back. It’s been slowly loping around our yard for the past couple of days, fascinating the cats. We fed it pieces of bread, which it eagerly ate.
Last light I saw it rise up from the floor of the asdjacent woods to fly up into our oak tree, a height of more than 50 feet. I’ve never seen a turkey fly that high. Later it flew off into the woods, freaking out my daughter’s friend, who’d never seen a turkey fly before.
They became common in our part of Connecticut about seven years ago. Pretty neat at the beginning, and our dog nearly broke her brain trying to understand a bird bigger than she is.
One time Duchess had an entire brood of young ones treed in the maple in our backyard.
Last fall there was a flock of 4 that was on the side or Rt 3 in the same spot nearly every day on my way to work. One occasionally hangs out just next to our building in the mornings. I’ve gotten very used to seeing them in suburbia.
One morning last week there was a turkey perching on top of our swing set. I walked by the kitchen door and saw it out of the corner of my eye and thought I was hallucinating. I stopped, and went back to the door and got a good look at it. The turkey got a good look at me, too, and flew into my neighbor’s yard.
My parents in TN feed (dried corn) a flock on their property which gets bigger and bigger every year (coupla dozen now).
They are still skittish about being approached after years, but so conditioned to the feeding that if my mom forgets, they will come up and peck at the back patio doors. Pics on request
There was a wild turkey last year that was hanging around an elementary school. It would walk up to the windows and peek in the classrooms! You can imagine the distraction this caused among the kids. Some helicopter parent said the bird might be dangerous to the special snowflakes and attack them. So, between the distraction of a turkey outside the windows all day and threat of breaking the limbs of school kids, the turkey was “relocated to a new home”. Whether that was out in a field some miles away or in the oven of someone’s home is undetermined.
I’ve seen groups of turkeys before, too. But this times it’s a solitary turkey, and it’s farther East than I’ve seen, and it’s been here a few days. That’s al unusual.
They were reintroduced to Ontario 20-odd years ago and are now very common, at least in Eastern Ontario. It was weird seeing them for the first time; I almost drove off the road.
A solitary turkey should be relocated, he belongs with a flock. Something may happen to the bird, wandering around alone, he’d be safer elsewhere. The DEC should be contacted!
Unfortunately, as I understand it, domesticated turkeys generally can’t fly. in fact, after a certain point, they can’t simply live very well They’re bred to put on weight fast and produce a lot of edible turkey muscle, not to be efficient and adaptable in the wild. Throwing them out of a moving plane is strongly contra-indicated.
To be truthful, I think that throwing even wild turleys out of a moving plane isn’t a good idea. Our turkey flew to a height of only about 50 feet.
I see them occasionally around here. I was also shocked to learn that wild turkeys can in fact fly when one flew across the road I was driving down. I nearly hit the little bastard.
I few years wild turkeys started showing up in the Bronx, on the Split Rock Golf Course. Probably the first time in centuries there had been wild turkeys in New York City.
Now there are coyotes too. I expect grizzly bears to show up any day now.
One of the reasons we chose the area we live in now is that I was driving along the county road and had to stop while a pack of at least 30 wild turkeys sauntered across the road. We see them often, and I enjoy them just as much as I did a decade ago. I especially like watching the toms put up their tails and dance in the field across the road.
They’re not so popular up in the Cities, though. Periodically there’s a news story on TV about a neighborhood being “taken over” by turkeys, causing great consternation among the suburbanites.
