a flock of feral turkeys fly up to the hundred-foot firs

July 8, 2021 5:38 PM

City Creatures. A blog from the Center for Humans and Nature about the other species who live among us, to name just a few: mallard ducks, spiders, crabs, waxwings, rats, and the aforementioned turkeys.

Also delightful, City Creatures' editor Gavin Van Horn's book Way of the Coyote. Sample chapters: Channel Coyotes; Scrapers of Sky (pdf).

posted by spamandkimchi (17 comments total)

Very cool! Thanks for posting.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:48 PM on July 8, 2021

Certain times of the year when I lived in the woods, there would be a soft background gobbling from the wild turkeys.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:05 PM on July 8, 2021

There are now several parkways in the southern part of Boston (West Roxbury, Roslindale and Hyde Park) that have deer-crossing signs. A couple years ago, I had to brake on Washington Street (the main thoroughfare through Roslindale) for a deer that was, well, crossing. We also have raccoons, skunks, groundhogs, opossums, turkeys, garter snakes and coyotes, as well as herons, swans, cormorants and snapping turtles at the local ponds. Hawks are not uncommon (sometimes chased by the local crows) and you'll even spot the odd bald eagle. This year, for some reason, we've had an explosion of mourning doves - they're everywhere.
posted by adamg at 7:12 PM on July 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I saw a turkey wandering the very well kept lawns of Manchester-by-the-Sea over the holiday weekend. A young man was harassing it mildly. I secretly hoped the turkey was vicious.
posted by praemunire at 8:11 PM on July 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Australian Scrub Turkey

The Australian brush turkey (Alectura Lathami), also frequently called the 'scrub turkey' or 'bush turkey', is a native Australian bird. It is protected under state wildlife legislation (Nature Conservation Act 1992). It is a serious offence to harm brush turkeys.
...
Brush turkeys are mound builders. The male Australian brush turkey builds a nesting mound of soil and plant litter mostly between August and December. The heap may be two to four metres wide and more than one metre high.
...
A mound-building male brush turkey can strip a standard garden in less than a day. If you disturb or move the mound, the male will probably rebuild the next day. They persist with the same location until the end of the breeding season. This activity is seasonal and decreases dramatically towards the end of the breeding season.

The adult brush turkey may intimidate or scare some people, but they are very shy by nature.

Relocation of brush turkeys can be very difficult and expensive. Often the removal or relocation of one bird will be quickly replaced by another.

In short, if a scrub turkey decides it likes your garden, your garden is fucked. It's illegal to do anything about it, you just have to welcome your new giant mound building friend.

You'd think you wouldn't see these much in the city, but I know of one nest just a kilometer from the CBD.
posted by adept256 at 8:39 PM on July 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

In Peoria, there were a fair number of "urban turkeys," some of whom lived on hunting land in the area, some who lived in nature preserves. It always gave me such a thrill when I was hiking and came across a harem of turkey hens, and their poults, digging around in the leaf litter for bugs. The tom would watch you suspiciously, and if he thought you were getting too close to his ladies (staying strictly on the path, of course!) he'd raise and spread his tail to show you he was VERY LARGE AND SCARY, and sometimes gobble at you in warning. It was SPLENDID, every time. I would always nod at the tom to say, "I respect that you are very large and scary!" and hurry on past his harem.

I live near a Chicago-area forest preserve now, so I see coyote on the fairly regular, and it's thrilling every time. But for me the biggest excitement is when I see a red fox, often at dusk cruising suburban yards, generally sleek and well-fed on suburban rabbits and rodents and looking VERY majestic. The other thing that gets me every time is melanistic squirrels, which lived in a teeny part of the Chicago area 30 years ago but now have spread quite a bit, so I'd say 20% of the squirrels I see are melanistic and I will stop EVERY TIME and stare at it until I can't see it anymore because EEEEEEEE black squirrel!

Last summer I was running an errand in Evanston (dropping some homemade masks for a friend) and when I was driving home, this magnificent buck deer was just TROTTING DOWN SHERIDAN ROAD. All traffic completely stopped, everybody racing to take pictures, and he was all like, "Look, this is the suburbs, none of you have guns, I will trot along this road as long and as slow as I damn well please." I see plenty of does and fawns (my friend has a pair in her backyard right now!), but this was a magnificent buck, 7 feet or more, 12-point rack, acting like he owned the city.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:24 PM on July 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

Might be a good time to mention one of the all-time great Metafilter comment-stories re: turkeys.
posted by lorddimwit at 9:30 PM on July 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

LES NESSMAN WASN'T WRONG!
posted by Windopaene at 10:12 PM on July 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

LES NESSMAN WASN'T WRONG!

It was Carlson's idea, but I take your point
posted by Optamystic at 1:50 AM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

I don't understand why they are referring to them as feral turkeys. They are wild turkeys that have become accustomed to living around humans.
posted by jkent at 4:04 AM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fun fact: Wild turkeys are about the size of velociraptors.

I like to pretend that turkeys are the result of a super secret dinosaur cloning program and they escaped into the wild and started breeding and now they roam the suburban landscape in flocks disrupting traffic, stalking people, and forcing us to reevaluate our relationship with nature.

Someone really needs to get on with writing this deadpan realistic version of Jurassic Park.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:03 AM on July 9, 2021

I aspire to be a scrub turkey. Sorry, TLC.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:42 AM on July 9, 2021

I've been enjoying Mulch Fungus lately. They way it dissolves into a lace-like pattern on the mulch revealing it's underlying effervescent nature despite its overt resemblance to vomit really speaks to me.
posted by srboisvert at 6:26 AM on July 9, 2021

We also get a surprising amount of wildlife in our tiny urban back yard. This year, we were introduced to a groundhog who has eaten most of my garden. I'm not sure what to do about it since, being in the city, the obvious methods of dispatch are pretty frowned on.

The rabbits have gone absolutely nuts around here over the past couple years. We get opossums (which I only see if I let the dog out very late at night) and skunks (never seen, only smelled). I saw a family of raccoons wandering down the street once. Plenty of hawks in the neighborhood, too, although we had a few infant mortality incidents recently since apparently people are putting out poison to try to control the rabbits. There's a bald eagle living by the lake nearby.

In the suburban parks where we go hiking with the dog, I'm always amazed at the variety of wildlife. Garter snakes and frogs! We watched a stoat chase a rabbit! A drainage pond filled with ducks, geese, and swans! I would say we see more wildlife in and around the city than when we go vacation in more rural areas, probably since the "country animals" are less accustomed to people and tend to keep their distance.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:52 AM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Twin Cities, turkeys abound, I have to navigate past a small flock while driving into the parking lot on my way in to work each morning. A hen and a few poults were wandering down our block a week or so back. We accidentally trapped an opossum in my sons soccer net, I had to sacrifice the net with a pair of kitchen scissors to gently release the poor guy (no harm done, except to the soccer net!). Shortly after moving here, a neighbor and I shared the carcasses of a few bluegill I had just filleted with an opportunistic raccoon, the lucky little fella took the fish when we handed them to him (using fire pit tongs, because we didn’t want to get too close). We've had 3 bald eagles land within 15 feet of us, too busy wrestling with each other in some sort of territorial dispute to notice (or care?) that they were near humans. I’ve seen a coyote while out on a running path, others have spotted them in alleys near our place. Someone even reported seeing a bear in St Paul just a few days ago.

There truly is a lot more wildlife in a city than many people would think. This past year, the quiet of the pandemic made the creatures more apparent.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:59 AM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Where I live, we keep track of turkey sightings and love our local turkey a lot. There are also frequently roundups of other wildlife sightings, just whatever pictures people send to the blog. I like the excitement about seeing animals. (Personally, even squirrel spotting makes me happy, how do they move like a wave rolling over the ground?)
posted by blueberry monster at 10:34 AM on July 9, 2021

Here in London UK we have pigeons, squirrels, rats, mice, many many urban foxes, all sorts of water- and wildfowl, songbirds of all kinds, birds of prey nesting in the high spires of skyscrapers, many insects including majestic stag beetles, and a very healthy population of bright green ring-necked parakeets. These last have recently arrived in my local park in significant numbers and lend an air of the tropics as they flap around and fight over territory. Still, I can't help but worry about what they're displacing, like the invasive grey squirrels who are everywhere now.
posted by fight or flight at 4:11 AM on July 10, 2021