Medium Sized Turkeys

These are the same two Wild Turkey hens that I showed four weeks ago. At that time, there were ten young birds, three larger and seven smaller. Now there are only four youngsters. It’s possible that they joined another brood and are now following a different hen, but it’s more likely that they were lost to predators or the weather.

Three of the smaller and one of the larger poults have survived. At this age they are more interested in eating the cracked corn. They can clean up a lot of corn in a hurry.

Looks like I’ve been spotted. I was beside the house when the turkeys came into the yard, so I just leaned up against the wall and held still. They were so anxious to begin eating corn that they didn’t notice as I slipped my camera from its holster and powered up. Now that they’ve had a good meal, they’re beginning to wonder what I am. The youngest three still don’t know anything’s going on.

I wasn’t scary enough to make them run away, but they did move out and head back toward the field. It’s actually a good thing that so few of the poults make it to adulthood. Having the flock size increase by three or four times would really have a devastating effect on the landscape.

Turkey Families

I’m seeing a lot of young turkey families right now. The excessive spring rains must have either delayed nesting or caused early nest to fail, because the young are usually much larger by this time of year. These two hens are still maintaining separate family units. By the end of July I should be seeing merged flocks of larger young birds.

These little guys may be young, but they are already capable fliers. It only takes 8 to 10 days from hatching for a turkey to be able to fly. As soon as they can fly, the hen takes her brood into the trees at night to roost.

It surprises me that these turkey families can spend as much as an hour wandering around the lawn without attracting any hawks. We have a resident Cooper’s Hawk pair that make quick work of any unwary Mourning Dove or Blue Jay in the yard. It seems to me that these little turkeys would make an ideal meal. Maybe I think that just because I would prefer to eat turkey.

It may appear that the hen is conducting lessons in proper grooming, but this is not the case. Grooming is an instinctual behavior that the young would learn even if raised apart from any adults. From the hen, the young will learn the boundaries of the territory they will inhabit. They also learn the most likely places to search for the food they’ll need to survive.

The grooming session makes it appear that a troupe of contortionists has taken up residence in the yard. Or it could be the turkey equivalent of yoga. These excursions into the yard usually take place in the early morning. The yard may be one of the few open places that the young turkeys can go to dry the morning dew out of their feathers. When they get a little bit older, the morning visits will stop.

Turkey Poults

I’m seeing young turkeys much later in the season than usual. This size bird is commonly seen around here in June. I’m wondering if the excessive rains and flooding this spring might have disrupted the early nesting attempts.

There are only three left of this brood. Weather continues to be a factor in their survival. Storms with heavy rain are still a regular event. Poults that get soaked to the skin are highly vulnerable to the elements and often don’t survive the experience.

The young birds stick close to their mother. After I watched a hen walk off and abandon her poults last year, it seems a good idea to keep a close eye on mom.

When the poults are a little older, they’ll probably merge into a mixed group of other young birds. It’s common to see a group of hens traveling with a large group of mixed age poults. By that time they’ll be pretty good at evading predators and they don’t seem to care which adult bird is really their mother.

I’m not sure that beneath the tail is the best place to seek shelter. The poult may be safe from many things in that position, but it seems a precarious location. He had better be ready to move if that tail starts to come up.

The hens with poults never spend much time feeding on corn. The job of the hen is to lead the little ones to areas likely to contain an abundance of protein rich insects. Those shouldn’t be hard to find this year.