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Ordinarily, I would not be pleased by the arrival of sixteen unexpected visitors.
But those who came calling on Sunday were not ordinary.
When we first lived here, we were on their route and came to count on seeing them periodically, but in recent years we seemed to have fallen out of favour.
Which made the visit of such a large number all the more exciting.
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Being summoned to a window is a daily occurrence which I usually respond to unless there’s a cat in my lap. Sunday morning I was only drying dishes and the man sounded particularly excited. As well he should have been!
The pictures below will be in Flickr…
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Wild turkeys in the driveway.
In recent years I could count on one hand the number of times we’ve seen a turkey here.
Occasionally we’ve seen them down in the corn field, but not near the house.
And never in such numbers.
The turkeys were pecking at worms which we assume have been brought out by the dry condition of the ground.
The adults keep watch as the babies wrestle with their food!
Turkey moms deserve a reward.
Eventually they sauntered off up the road toward the farm.
Saunter is definitely the word for a wild turkey’s gait.
We were delighted and hoped they would come again.
Sure enough, around 6 pm I looked up to see them moving sedately past my window.
This time they came closer, so we were able to count:
4 adults and 12 young of which I would call 4 juveniles.
The adults do a great job of supervising, but inevitably there is a tail-end Charlie who wants to go off in the wrong direction…
…taking advantage of Mum’s momentary inattention as she stoops to peck for herself.
“Now where’s that little shit got to?”
“Get down that hill with your brothers. And don’t run away again!”
“Or the bear will get you!”
We watched from a back window as they moved across the meadow.
But before long they’d done a circuit around the house and were out front again.
So then we glued ourselves back to that window.
“Bye now. Come back and see us again!”
We are very fond of wild turkeys.
In case you didn’t guess.
Thank you so much, Carolyn, for the pictures of the delightful encounter! I hope they will come back soon!
Joanna
I’ve never seen so many wild turkeys at one time.
Too bad for the fox. He was somewhere else…
A flock, my goodness. If they were domesticated, they would be a rafter – I only just learned that!
A wild turkey movie! That’s how it felt to me while I was reading your post! How exciting is this! Here’s a fun fact I just read the other day: “A turkey’s head changes colour—red, blue, or white—depending on its emotional state” … good thing it doesn’t happen to humans 😉.
I did not know that about turkeys! It would be good if human heads turned bright red when they tell lies!
Haha 😁, yes that would be so funny!!
A joyful encounter indeed, and the photos were so good they even showed the worms!
Best wishes, Pete.