Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Wild turkeys in the front yard

I stood on our front porch yesterday morning and snapped these pictures of a wild tom turkey in our neighbor's front yard. The sun had just risen and was backlighting his feathers from my perspective.

He follows his flock of females around, spreading his feathers as if to impress them. Most of the females appear to pay no attention to him.
















He is part of a flock that lives in the 150+ acres of woods and fields behind our house. Sometimes at sunset we see the huge birds jockeying for roosting positions in the tall trees, and we often observe 12 or more of them in the woods. They particularly like to scavenge for birdseed that falls from our bird feeders. They sound particularly comical in the woods, as if they are telling jokes. A long period of silence will be broken by excited gobbling, as if one of them has told a good joke.

1 comment:

Genevieve Netz said...

That's a good shot of the big tom. I've never been so lucky. I see turkeys fairly often in the fields beside the river, but I'm driving down the highway when I see them.