Local turkeys doing their thing. I can’t even begin to explain how supremely unconcerned
Local turkeys doing their thing. I can’t even begin to explain how supremely unconcerned they are by all the passersby. The first one is not using a zoom at all, they really are just one foot off the path… or shortly after these pictures, actually on the path, during a time of busy foot-traffic (of the human variety). I suspect these might be the grown-up poults from this past spring, who were raised just a few feet away from this, under some convenient rhododendron bushes. There is a pair of them who are almost daily sights, but this is the first time I’ve seen this many of them here in a while.It’s really interesting (to me) because this establishment of an urban turkey population is pretty much entirely an in-the-last-15-years thing. They didn’t used to be here, certainly not in these numbers. (There was a point during the pandemic when one of my colleagues encountered a flock of 40 of them in the middle of a nearby major street.) Then they moved in and have never looked back. (Turkeys are classified as game birds, and so legally their population can be managed – unlike for example Canada geese – but they can’t be hunted outside of a regulated hunting season. One hopes there are restrictions on how they can be hunted in dense urban areas, though. I can’t actually find that any of the towns around here have turkey-management policies? I’ll have to look into it. What I do find on various town websites is pages with advice to residents on how to live alongside wild animals, including turkeys (and coyotes).I wish there was better light on their feathers, because I think that they’re so pretty – all shimmering copper and green. -- source link
#turkeys#my photos