Turkey Tracks: November 4, 2013
Wild Turkeys in the Spring
So, many of you know by now that I love to put something on the blog from the opposite season of the year. Since this is fall, that would mean something from spring.
Here’s a picture of two of the wild male turkeys that stay around the house all winter–roosting in the trees at night–they look like black garbage bags way, way up in the tops of the firs–and eating food the chickens discard into their bedding and which gets thrown out as I clean out the coop.
In the spring, they start courting the many hens that hang with them all winter. And, as they fluff out their feathers and drag their wings on the ground, their heads turn cobalt blue. See?
It’s not a great picture, but you can see their heads starting to turn blue.
Turkeys are very social. Even wild ones.
It is routine for me to call “goodnight” to them as I lock up the coop at dusk and put my chickens to bed. And these greetings start in late winter and go well into the spring.
After the spring courting–when the turkeys break into smaller bands of hens with one or two males–the hens nest and break away to raise their babies. It is not unusual to see a hen with a dozen little ones following after her across a ditch or the road.
At this point I imagine that they are all fox food. I can’t imagine how they survive the spring, hungry foxes, who are also raising babies.
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