Turkey watching
One of the wonderful things about living in a rural area is the abundance of wildlife sightings. This opportunity is even more special with children, I think. And more interesting.
I’ve seen snakes and frogs and skunks in abundance with my son and daughter. My little girl and I even surprised a fawn once as we unwittingly invaded its hiding space when we took a rest on a concrete culvert in the woods near our driveway. We were sitting on the pipe talking when we heard a high-pitched scream. We went flying in two different directions as we exited the scene, only realizing a third being had beaten a hasty retreat when we saw the little tan-and-white figure flitting off through the trees, presumably in search of its mother. I honestly don’t know who was more shocked in that moment — us or the fawn, which had let out a cry of horror when it realized we had sat down on its hiding spot. We still talk about that experience.
Now that I think about it, marching around trying to observe wildlife with little ones “helping” makes for some unforeseeable surprises. I recently had another experience that ended memorably.
My son and daughter had just woken up on a recent Saturday, and I was with my son in our living room. I noticed a few turkeys on our side lawn and pointed them out to him. “Chickens!” he exclaimed.
This isn’t the first time he’s gotten his birds mixed up. I always get a kick out of his insistence that these huge, trundling wild birds are actually domesticated fowl just hanging out on our property. “No, honey. Turkeys,” I told him. “Oh. Hurkeys,” he replied. If you’ve ever spent time with a toddler, you know how much they love to correct people. My son is no different, and during a turkey spotting, if he’s decided the birds are chickens, he will let me know. This time, though, it seemed he had internalized the right name.
By this time, I had noticed several other turkeys, and as I scanned the lawn and driveway, I saw more and more birds. By the time I finished counting, I had spotted 15 of them browsing in the short grass and plodding around on the gravel driveway, their cumbersome bodies swaying from side to side as they plucked up bugs.
My 7-year-old daughter had seen the flock, too, and she was counting the birds. We agreed that we’ve never seen so many turkeys together, although we’ve enjoyed watching them in different contexts. Back in the spring, we watched two females forage for food on many mornings. They would walk slowly up and down our driveway, clucking thoughtfully as they moved to and from their nests.
According to The Cornell Lab (allaboutbirds.org), turkeys often flock with members of the same sex. Several females might form a single band with their chicks, and males might flock together after mating season. Now, I don’t know much about turkeys, and I’d be out of my depth if I tried to guess the demographics of this flock, but what I can say definitively is that wild turkeys don’t like loud noises. Here’s how I know.
After the initial spotting, events surrounding turkey watching sped up significantly in the way that only people familiar with small children can relate to. I stepped into our adjoining kitchen momentarily, allowing my son and daughter to stay put and observe the tranquil gathering through the windows. I was on my way back to the living room almost immediately. I had been gone, oh, 4½ seconds when I heard the door to our porch open. This was my cue to hurry as our children know they’re not allowed outside without an adult.
As I hastily entered the living room, three words uttered at a scream by a toddler voice reached my ears:
“I. LOVE. HURKEYS!!!”
I rounded up my little people and simultaneously witnessed 15 wild turkeys tearing up the grassy hill opposite our house at a dead run. They wallowed swiftly up the incline toward the trees, never once slowing pace. They made an organized bunch as they poured into the woods, disappearing completely from sight in less than 20 seconds.
From my daughter’s description, it appears the temptation of moving closer to the birds overcame her little brother, and he saw the perfect opportunity when I stepped into the kitchen. He declared his affinity for wild fowl unabashedly and in a manner audible to half of Floyd County — hence the hurried exodus and subsequent disappearance of the largest flock of turkeys I’ve ever seen.
And so another wildlife sighting went down in the Crumbly family history books. For us, it was engaging and entertaining. The turkeys might reject my first two descriptors, but I think we can all agree the event had an unexpected ending.
Elizabeth Crumbly is a newspaper veteran and freelance writer. She lives in rural Northwest Georgia where she teaches riding lessons, writes and raises her family. She is a former editor of The Catoosa County News. You can correspond with her at www. collective-ink.com.