A minute ago I heard a strange sound and thought “Was that a…?” but heard nothing more and dismissed it. But then it came again and I started working my way around the house, peering out each window in turn. And there they were! A flock of five wild turkeys calmly strolling down from the back hill to my neighbor’s driveway! They seemed to check out his vehicles (a couple cars, a truck, an RV) and then head off across his front yard, only to reappear from the far side yard to the back yard and then right on up to the old stone wall and across it into the neighborhood’s ‘pocket wilderness.’
Our road forms a nearly complete loop around a small hill of scattered trees and brushy areas and especially jagged outbreaks of good old native yankee granite. The land is basically ‘useless’ and was walled off by some long ago farmer dumping the eternal crop of granite boulders that spontaneously erupt around here. When they developed this neighborhood they ran the road around the low point around the hills and assigned each of the houses on the ‘inside’ side of the road a pie-shaped slice of the hill as part of their property. For at least the last fifty years, none of us have done anything with it, beyond kids playing hide and seek games – it was fabulous for that.
Over the years we have enjoyed glimpses of genuine wild life there – deer, skunks, coyotes (just once), peacocks (really!) and the usual squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks and tons of birds but this is the first time I’ve seen and heard turkeys! Them suckers are big!
I know this is probably nothing usual to those of you who live in the spread out and rural areas of the country, but this is a close-in suburb of Boston! It’s totally built up area with high tech firms, tons of highways, there’s an air base less than two miles from my house!
And we have wild life going out for a casual stroll through it all in mid-morning.
When I lived in low-density suburbia near the then-perimeter of slowly sprawling development we had similar wildlife enjoying their little patches of forest amongst the schools & strip malls & whatnot. Including wild turkeys. Once you’ve heard that gobble, it’s not a sound you’ll ever wonder about again. We didn’t have peacocks though.
But a turkey sighting was always the high point of the day. Even better if they’re flying, but they don’t do a lot of that. Seems like they thought about flying about as we think about running: Can do if needed, but I’d rather not thank you.
Those little wild places in heavily human-settled areas can add up to quite a bit of habitat.
Some people add what would otherwise be chemicaled monocropped lawn to them; though in some places this will get you in trouble with the neighbors, or with the local authorities.
We have wild turkeys here in our neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis. Having had encounters with turkeys overseas, I always carry a walking stick when I’m out for a stroll and cross the street to avoid being a threat to them. Turkeys are aggressive, unpredictable and dangerous.
Wow, I had no idea they were potentially dangerous! They looked so calm and dignified, pacing along like matrons on a beach side boardwalk. Guess it was a good thing it was so cold here 1 degree F at 7 a.m. I had not the slightest idea of leaving my nice warm house for a better look.
BTW, one of them had a sizable tuft of feathers that jutted out from chest, say midway between what would be a human’s chest and belly, The other’s did not. Was Tufty a male vs. females maybe? It just looked strange.
There are currently more wild turkeys than have ever existed. It’s a conservation success story, and they don’t mind urbanization so much. White tailed deer too.
If you’re interested in turkeys and turkey behavior, this was a fascinating and charming piece on Nature about Joe Hutto’s year of living as a wild turkey:
I live with flocks of the silly things, and I learned a lot. They are far more interesting than I would ever have imagined!
Dangerous is pushing it, if the implication is threat to life. Capable of causing you pain, absolutely. A turkey peck isn’t a lovetap - an individual hyper-aggressive ~25-lb male that’s unafraid of people can “terrorize” a neighborhood during breeding season by acting like an asshole, occasionally chasing and attacking pets and unwary passer-bys. But a threat to life or even serious injury they overwhelmingly are not. Here’s an Audobon article on how to co-exist and deal with pissy individuals.
I have turkeys roosting maybe 15-20 ft from my front door (I’m on a hill, so a treetop roost is right across from me) and other than being loud when they wake up every morning it isn’t an issue. They wander all over my condo complex and the surrounding park largely ignoring residents and pets every day. I haven’t heard of any serious issues to date, though a handful of more fastidious non-nature-fan residents dislike them (but I’m pretty sure they are greatly outnumbered by the turkey enthusiasts).