Wild Turkey - Dindon sauvage
This is not an ironic Thanksgiving Turkey, as we celebrate the holiday in Canada today. Rather it is an expression of genuine thanks, for the amazing experiences and surprises that come from getting up early and going out in the woods, or along the River, or to the Lake.
This bird was photographed in a conservation area that is more or less surrounded by human habitation. Not tightly surrounded, and not with high density housing, but it classifies I think as an urban conservation area.
Somehow a Wild Turkey (pictured) took up residence there. It is unclear how, and it doesn’t matter. For over a year it frightened, entertained, and occasionally hustled food from, visitors to the area. It roosted in the trees, and kept moving, and it could go weeks without being seen (it is a largish area). Surviving last winter was not a given, but it managed.
So the bird was already one of those surprises that comes from getting up and going out - I have been going there for years and never imagined I would get this close to a Wild a Turkey.
And then somehow this spring it had twelve young. No one knows how, no one saw a male, and yet there it was, escorting the young birds through the bush and hiding in the remote parts of the conservation area.
There are only seven of the offspring still roaming around. Watching them run down the trails is a pretty compelling argument for the birds-from-dinosaurs hypothesis: one feels like one is in a scene from Jurassic Park.
But this is just a way to give thanks to the amazing richness of the natural world, and to the possibility of something new and different that helps to motivate us getting up in the dark, and the cold, and going out for the sunrise.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Wild Turkey - Dindon sauvage
This is not an ironic Thanksgiving Turkey, as we celebrate the holiday in Canada today. Rather it is an expression of genuine thanks, for the amazing experiences and surprises that come from getting up early and going out in the woods, or along the River, or to the Lake.
This bird was photographed in a conservation area that is more or less surrounded by human habitation. Not tightly surrounded, and not with high density housing, but it classifies I think as an urban conservation area.
Somehow a Wild Turkey (pictured) took up residence there. It is unclear how, and it doesn’t matter. For over a year it frightened, entertained, and occasionally hustled food from, visitors to the area. It roosted in the trees, and kept moving, and it could go weeks without being seen (it is a largish area). Surviving last winter was not a given, but it managed.
So the bird was already one of those surprises that comes from getting up and going out - I have been going there for years and never imagined I would get this close to a Wild a Turkey.
And then somehow this spring it had twelve young. No one knows how, no one saw a male, and yet there it was, escorting the young birds through the bush and hiding in the remote parts of the conservation area.
There are only seven of the offspring still roaming around. Watching them run down the trails is a pretty compelling argument for the birds-from-dinosaurs hypothesis: one feels like one is in a scene from Jurassic Park.
But this is just a way to give thanks to the amazing richness of the natural world, and to the possibility of something new and different that helps to motivate us getting up in the dark, and the cold, and going out for the sunrise.
Happy Thanksgiving!