Talking Turkey

After declaring the roads too icy to drive to church Sunday morning, I was just starting to relax when Bob called out from the kitchen, "Bring the camera!"

Between twenty and thirty wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) were in the yard. The camera and I had a great time.

The little birds, chickadees and tufted titmice, take sunflowers seeds from the feeders into this nearby evergreen to crack them and eat them. The turkeys feasted on dropped seeds.

With their normal food (acorns, seeds) buried under a foot of frozen slush (read about it here), we were delighted to give them a Sunday breakfast.


The male gobblers are four feet from head to tip of tail feathers. A very impressive bird.

The females are a foot shorter, but still have plenty of meat.

See the "beard" growing out of his center chest? That's the easy way to tell this is a male. The females have a shorter beard.

Both genders are pretty birds in an ugly sort of way with their metallic iridescent feathers changing color with the angle and the light.


This guy must have noticed the lady in the window aiming something at him.

No way to explain it was only a camera and he was welcome to stay as long as he wanted.

We kept the dogs in the house until the last turkey was out of the yard and out of sight in the woods across the street.


Wild turkeys can fly, but prefer to run when alarmed.

A few of them had a problem getting out of the yard. They would approach the driveway at a right angle and run into the open gate. Instead of walking a few feet around the gate, they assumed it was an endless fence, and retreated back to the corner of the yard where they started. They repeated this over and over again, giving us the impression that Wild Turkeys are not the smartest of birds.