365 Urban Species. #096: Wild Turkey

[urbpan]

Urban species #096: Wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo

If I were to expound upon the remarkable recovery of North America's greatest bird, you could be excused for thinking I was talking about the bald eagle or the California condor. North America's greatest bird, in terms of sheer mass, is the wild turkey, a species that was extirpated from many areas, including the state of Massachusetts, by the middle of the nineteenth century. Similar forces to those that turned mountain lions, wolves, and passenger pigeons into distant memories for Bay Staters, had wiped away Ben Franklin's favorite bird. But people who loved turkeys--both as a striking part of the native fauna and as a traditional hunting target and main course--arranged to import turkeys from Vermont (the only U.S. state without a city, and the last refuge of the mountain lion in the northeast). Stricter controls of hunting, and the spread of suburbia, where hunting is prohibited, have led to the turkey becoming a conspicuous part of the landscape once again.

In fact, with so much of the state having been turned into virtual forest edges, wild turkeys, like white-tailed deer, may be more prevalent around Boston today than they have been in 400 years. Stories about run-ins with turkeys are a staple of the suburban papers, with angry toms frequently sparring with their own reflection on cars and other shiny surfaces. Standing around three feet tall and weighing close to twenty pounds (double the weight of a large eagle) it's easy to see why they turn heads. Their ground-dwelling habits and large average brood size means that a turkey encounter is often a parade of a dozen or more huge glossy characters.

As they increase in the city, their main obstacle will be the limits of human tolerance. Cars will kill some, coyotes, foxes, and dogs will catch some young poults. They will eat spilled bird seed at feeders, and a few urban areas will have sufficient acorns and beech nuts to support a number of turkeys. But will people appreciate seeing wild turkeys, or like coyotes and deer, will they be seen as a problem to be managed?







Random fact I couldn't fit elsewhere: Turkeys are one of very few animals native to North America, that have been domesticated.

Comments

[phlogiston-5.livejournal.com]

Totally unrelated to turkeys, but related to your post...mountain lions have been sighted in PA recently.

[sheridankm.livejournal.com]

Aww, we saw one just today in a Watertown office park. It was magnificent.

[izzy23.livejournal.com]

Birders in one of the close-in suburbs near here have just started spotting wild turkey in the local park again after decades and decades of no such thing. This subdivision was built in the fifties and is pretty much surrounded by strip-mall-and-office-park style development (though, this being Tallahassee, even the strip malls have more trees than many places, and there is a sizable city park nearby.)

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

I enjoy wild turkeys. They're good-looking, amusing, don't compete with humans for food, don't knock over garbage cans, do not eat domestic pets that happen to be outdoors, and they shut up at night. What's not to like?

In other news, black bears are making a big comeback in Maryland, and moving further east - they are now in counties east of Frederick. This puts them pretty much into the suburbs of DC.

[harrietbrown.livejournal.com]

When I saw turkeys, I knew I had to say something. The state psychiatric facility where I work has a large population of turkeys and other fowl, such as geese, seagulls, pigeons (of course) and chickens. The turkeys are pretty grand, but occasionally they swarm around you, and that's a little intimidating. A bunch of them (what do you call a group of turkeys?) migrated to another, not so nice part of the island and were killed for food. The police caught the people. Bullets are cheaper than meat, one of my friends explained to me. Pretty sad.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

like deer, there are more wild turkeys every year in the hills around my parents' home valley in pennsylvania.


this isn't related except in the broadest 365-way, BUT!--have you ever heard of a rat using underground tunnels (as in, in soil) to get from place to place outdoors?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Rats in tunnels--

Sure, it's possible. Norway rats (brown rats, sewer rats, Rattus norvegicus--as opposed to black rats Rattus rattus, which semi-arboreal) are subterranean, so if there are existing tunnels I'm sure they would use them. I wouldn't expect them to make their own tunnels, like a mole or chipmunk, but they would certainly make use of preexisting tunnels.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

hmm. i believe this is a norway rat, but not having seen it myself, i am not positive.

a rat has taken to tunneling under my mother's fence. the opening is right by where the spilled birdseed from her feeders lands. she suspects that it started out utilizing one of the chipmunk tunnels, but every time she tries to block the tunnel entrance, it builds its own new entrance. does this sound like typical rat behavior? maybe three mile island belatedly made some mutant semi-rat creature...

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

That sounds perfectly plausible. Building a new entrance to an existing tunnel would be no sweat for a rat. If it's in the northeast, or inland at all, it won't be black rat (they are coastal/subtropical animals, and can't compete with Norways in temperate/inland areas).

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

rats do whatever they can to get to wherever they want. it's part of why they're so successful. mmmmm, birdseed.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

oh yes, i know. what i didn't know was whether actually digging new entrances to tunnels, and things like that, were things that rats could do. :)

[ex-wellread.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be our national bird instead of the bald eagle that we did chose instead.

I'm glad we chose the eagle.

[ichigo-neko.livejournal.com]

Where I come from, neither deer nor turkey are considered a nuisance, to my knowledge. I've seen turkey hanging out at the local JC, and deer contribute to the quaint-picturesque-tourist-friendly image that the Monterey peninsula loves to cultivate.

Anyway, these are fun. Huzzah livejournal for spotlighting you.