Category Archive for ‘Merriam's wild turkey’ at Beside the Stream

Archive for the 'Merriam's wild turkey' Category

Turkey Sex

Published on April 1, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 1 Comment

I puzzled over what to do for April Fools, and my mother suggested that I write about turkey sex. This is a reverse April Fools: it is something that you’d think was untrue, but it’s true.

Turkeys can reproduce asexually. (So can many fish and some reptiles, but there aren’t a lot of birds that do and certainly the turkey’s the biggest bird.)

A turkey hen can hatch a clutch of eggs without ever seeing a male. Somewhere between a few percent and 30% of all turkey eggs are self-fertilized, and it’s believed that the chicks from these self-fertilized eggs are always male. So a turkey hen can go and make herself a man.

Here’s my theory on why: Tom turkeys are mild mannered most of the year, but when their hormones hit in the spring they put on a stunning display. Here is a turkey who is thinking of food

and here is a turkey who is thinking of sex.

OMG.

I’ve read accounts of Toms strutting in a figure eight, wearing a track into the ground, gobbling furiously. I think they get so inflamed with hormones, so intent on their interest in mating that anyone can kill them… and they do. There stands this poor Tom, swept away with passion, and so stimulating to the hens in his florid display that it’s worth dying for.

And if all the males get killed during mating season, no worries, because the hens have figured out how to carry on alone for a generation.

You know the old saying Handsome is as handsome does? I don’t think that turkeys ascribe to it.

Living with Wildlife

Published on March 13, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and deer herd. 8 Comments

In contrast with the little horse who won’t let me near her, the wild deer and turkeys are happy to have me around. When I took this picture, I was standing ten feet away in plain sight with a 95 pound dog next to me. These animals are willing to coexist with us.

When a flock of wild turkeys moved onto our land, I learned that (wait for it) turkey hunting is not a sport. Radical statement, I know, but this is why: turkeys don’t migrate, they flock together, they don’t fly much and they have a home territory. This means that groups of big birds are out walking on their rounds every day, and roosting in the same place each night. If I wanted to kill five male turkeys, I can do this any day in the backyard at 10AM, or in the neighbor’s backyard at 11AM/ camo is optional. A turkey is too big to hide, can’t fly away, and walks around. You can harvest an animal that behaves like that, but the only reason it is remotely sporting is that nearly all turkeys are already killed so hunters have to travel to remote spots to find the last ones…which doesn’t seem sporting.

Biologists say that wild turkeys are generalists that exploit many different food sources, and their populations can become large if they’re tolerated. Their range includes most of the US.

If wild turkey hunters took a break for a bit, there could be more turkeys next year and less empty habitat the year after that. Wild turkeys are living in New York’s Central Park, I hear, and they could be living throughout suburbia. Then there would be enough to harvest. Until that time, I wish those turkey hunters would just simmer down.

And so does he.

Turkey Beauty Revisited (and two new words)

Published on February 29, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 0 Comments

I know you must be eagerly awaiting the promised head shots for the gobbler beauty contest. The truth is much stranger than I had imagined.

The two new words are caruncle and snood.

See how this tom has a pierced eardrum? He must be deaf in his left ear. The snood is the small growth between his eyes and his beak. It’s just a little thing when he is relaxed, but it grows as long as five inches when he gets excited. The snood will flop over his beak when he struts for hens, or has dominance struggles with other toms. But when he’s hanging around feeling happy it’s not very impressive.

This male has a lovely snood and wattle, the pink sac of flesh hanging under his chin and on his chest. Turkey wattles don’t look like much unless they’re thinking about women.

This turkey has a winning wattle and beard combination. The beard is a modified feather that hangs down to the ground; the hens sometimes have little ones, and adult males take a few years before their beard brushes against the ground.

This turkey doesn’t want to play. His beard, snood and wattles can’t be rated, but he gets the prize for caruncles, the little fleshy red tabs on the blue skin of his neck.

snood /snud/ –noun

1.	the distinctive headband formerly worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England.

2.	a headband for the hair.

3.	a netlike hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman’s hair.

4.	the pendulous skin over the beak of a turkey.

–verb (used with object)

5.	to bind or confine (the hair) with a snood.

[Origin: bef. 900; ME: fillet, ribbon; OE snōd]

car·un·cle /ˈkærʌŋkəl, kəˈrʌŋ-/–noun

1.	Botany. a protuberance at or surrounding the hilum of a seed.

2.	Zoology. a fleshy excrescence, as on the head of a bird; a fowl’s comb.

3.	Anatomy. a small, fleshy growth.

[Origin: 1605–15; earlier caruncula < L: small piece of flesh, dim. of carō (gen. carnis) flesh; for suffix, see carbuncle]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Beauty and the Beholder’s eye

Published on February 22, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 0 Comments

If you’re looking at feathers or thinking of dinner, it’s easy to see that this bird is a beauty

but eye to eye, it’s a different story. The naked red and blue skinned head, the exposed eardrums, the lavender mask on his face and that tuft on the growth between his eyes… it takes some adjustment to see this turkey as handsome.

We’ll have a turkey beauty contest as soon as I get some head shots.

Clearing the roof

Published on February 6, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey, Snow storm and teenagers. 0 Comments

Bob decided that with so much snow, we needed to shovel off the roof. The thought of moving so many tons makes me feel like a delicate flower, plus I’m sure the roof is a very dangerous place for me to be. Luckily, Sam and a friend were just back from skiing, and we picked up another friend making four strong men for shovelling.

The turkeys were alarmed by the noise, and perched high in the ponderosas until everyone was down from the roof.

By the time the job was done, the boys were ready for food and another adventure.

In some ways, teenaged boys are the most useful creatures on earth. They are so active and need so many calories that they’ll shovel tons of snow for goodwill and food. When I explain which treat can be ready by the time they complete some onerous task, the job is as good as done. At the core, their motto is something like “Can Move Mountains for Food”; mine is “Will Cook”.

Turkeys in a tree, three one and two

Published on February 2, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 2 Comments

In the deep snow, turkeys have been roosting in the tree directly by the barn. There were six big turkeys perched in it yesterday morning (and I learned how to Photoshop a spotlight and lens flare). There were three turkeys on the right

one on the left

and two in the middle

Isn’t he the handsomest? See his beard swinging forward to brush his toes? These wild turkeys are supposed to be smart, and they’ve been quick to understand the rules here: they know that the dog won’t bother them and that I’ll scatter four cups of corn under the pines in the morning. I’m betting they stay smart in the summer, when the rules include keeping out of the gardens. Bob’s not so sure.

Snow Day!

Published on January 28, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and Snow storm. 2 Comments

For the first time since 1997, school is out for a snow day. In some parts of the US, four or five inches of snow is enough to cancel school; here it takes feet. This storm rolled in two days ago, when I was hiking high above the valley. The snow swept down from the north

and from the west

Two days later, school was called off and the turkeys are hiding out in the well of the neighbor’s pine tree.

Here is Bob clearing the driveway. I surely do love to see a man on a tractor doing some giant task, but I bet the first hour is more fun than the second or third.

He cleared snow for three hours.

Feeding Ancestral Puebloan Turkeys

Published on January 19, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 0 Comments

It is embarrassingly easy to make friends with turkeys in the winter. I put out about 4 cups of cracked corn from Towaoc every day, and often a dozen or thirteen turkeys come by to eat it. I think there are eight females that all flock together, and a separate gang of four or five males who started visiting when I started putting out corn.

Today about fifteen minutes after I tossed the cracked corn into the pine needles, a male comes by with a silly looking beard. He starts eating and I lay down in the snow about eight feet away to take some pictures.

I’m thinking “what a handsome turkey you are (wish I had on ski pants)”

as the snow melts through my jeans, and suddenly there are two turkeys in my viewfinder

three

and by the time I sit up it’s a turkey convention.

These turkeys know that I put out the corn–they’ve watch me do it. And they fell for it just like a five-year-old falls for hot chocolate spiked with cream.

A Fowl Dilemma

Published on January 11, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 3 Comments

Turkeys are such big birds that many men think they look like dinner.

I know it’s more trouble than dinner is worth because fifteen years ago an old bachelor farmer gave me a tom of his that had been hit by a car. It took an unreasonable number of repulsive steps to get that turkey into a pan for seasoning, and then you’re left with a big pair of feet that you’re supposed to boil up for soup and just can’t. It’s horrible, and the local slaughterhouse doesn’t take poultry. That’s one problem. The other problem is that these turkeys have been running around scavenging since the day they hatched. No doubt they’d make a tasty stew boiled down for 48 hours, but they really aren’t a roast meat you’d want to face without special knives. They’d be tough as boots, but even so people often talk about killing them.

The real problem, though, is that turkeys are a new addition to the neighborhood. Miss Roberta says they’re the first local flock since she moved here in the 1940s. And they’re bold, with regular rounds that include gardens up and down the road. This fall, four of them began roosting in the trees by our upper irrigation ditch. And then on Christmas Day there were eight turkeys marching around, and there has been a flock of six or eight ever since.

With such deep snow, the turkeys are looking thin. So I just happened to stop by the Feed Coop, kind of pretending I wasn’t,

and I just happened to get 100 lbs of cracked corn. It just happened. Let’s just say that it happened because every woman loves to see a man in Carhartt’s canvas workclothes moving heavy sacks.

And I put a few cups of cracked corn out for the turkeys (who really did look thin, and who people keep mentioning in the same sentence as dinner).

After the deed was done, I looked up the Department of Wildlife’s opinion on feeding turkeys. I learned that these Merriam’s wild turkeys live in the high Ponderosa forests of the Southwest, total population 334,460 to 344,460. And here’s the twist–Merriam’s wild turkey is the exact same turkey as the domesticated turkeys that lived with the Pueblo Indians. It is believed the ancestral Puebloans brought these turkeys from Mexico, and when the ancestral Pueblo culture died out around 1400 AD their turkeys ran off to the forests and are still there today as Merriam’s wild turkey.

So this is my story and I’m sticking to it: I’m not feeding wild turkeys at all; I’m raising a flock of ancestral Puebloan turkeys. These gals lay 10 to 12 eggs in a clutch, so a sidebar of corn through a tough winter might make all the difference. The turkeys live here year-round, so everyone knows where to find them. It’s so easy to see a turkey, and there are so many hunters. Dilemma.

Out of Power

Published on January 7, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and Snow storm. 0 Comments

The snow hasn’t stopped yet. Avalanches have closed the pass to the north and the pass to the east. Our power was out for 28 hours, along with the heat and hot water.

The mountain had 26 inches of snow in 24 hours, so after our first night with no power we all went up to the ski area for first tracks in the morning. As they say around here, we got freshies. Bob has powder skis, long wide straight Big Kahunas. But Sam and I don’t, and the deep powder was heavy enough that it’d redirect our skis on sections that weren’t steep enough. We both fell more times than you’d choose to count. It was epic, but not completely in a good way.

We got home to no heat, no light, no hot bath, no computer and a refrigerator/freezer that needed to be emptied. The coffin freezer in the cellar had gone from 3F to 27F. And it wasn’t just our road, of course, but whole swathes of the landscape. Communities to the east are still without power. People are starting to use the cots set up at the county center, and this part of Colorado had sold out of generators.

I was tired, so I went to town with Sam for food and a movie while Bob, my hero, dealt with the refrigerator. We doubled up on covers and the power came back last night.

The weight of the snow bent down the light on the barn, but that’s our only storm damage

and the turkeys didn’t seem to mind at all.

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