The Turkey’s Tale


As we continue to eat Thanksgiving leftovers of every imaginable description, let us also give thanks that the wild turkey has been brought back from the brink of extinction. Abundant when the first settlers arrived on the East Coast of America, the native turkey was hunted for both its meat and feathers. As more and more of its woodland habitat was converted to urban areas, the combined effect of loss of habitat and uncontrolled hunting took its toll. In the early 1900s, the number of turkeys nationwide is believed to have dropped to 30,000 birds. Today, thanks to preservation efforts, there are nearly 7 million.

In our neck of the woods, we still see turkeys running wild through the forest, nesting, and roosting in trees at night. In years past, we’ve been visited by as many as 32 birds at once (five hens and their broods). The guard hen gave a soft cluck when she felt it was safe for each bird to climb up into the yard from a lower plateau. With military precision, they fanned out across the lawn in a straight line formation, eating every bug in sight; then marched off into the woods.

Last winter we had the “driveway turkeys,” a pair of males who walked up and down our driveway each morning to peck at the grit and mast.

Turkeys require mast --- acorns, nuts, seeds, and other edible material that falls from forest trees --- and wild grasses in their diet. The forest also provides shelter, nesting, and roosting areas. No forest, no mast, no turkeys. The web of interdependence is clear.

You would think we might have learned something from our previous near-miss in losing the wild turkey, but the devastation of our forests continues today unabated.

So next year, when you are paying your annual homage to the Pilgrims and Native Americans, please also remember the Turkey’s Tale, and make a contribution to a land conservancy that will help us preserve our forests.

Popular posts from this blog

Detention Basins: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Image
In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which
Keep reading

Please Garden Responsibly. Because What You Spray in Your Garden Doesn’t Stay in Your Garden

Image
American Lady caterpillar on licorice plant. Photo: Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden Scores of their silky tents covered the licorice plant in the container on my porch. Inside the tents, something was gobbling up the leaves faster than I could pick them off. The plant must have been infested when I bought it. As I reached for my organic insecticide, I thought, “Wait, you don’t know what kind of caterpillars these are!” I recalled an article on pest management by a friend who cautioned: “Sometimes, the best treatment is no treatment at all.” It took the better part of the afternoon for me to identify the miniature mowing machines. In the meantime, half of them had started dropping from their perches and wriggling off into the underbrush. I hoped I had made the right decision. The licorice plant was devastated. But then I noticed that the caterpillars had not eaten the leaves all the way down to the stem. Possibly, secondary buds could sprout and still provide a silvery
Keep reading

Musings on the Relativity of Time and The Arithmetic of Overpopulation

Image
I celebrated my birthday recently. Beyond a certain age, birthdays become a double-edged sword. You’re glad you made it to the next one, but realize that there are far fewer years ahead of you than behind you. The list of absent friends grows ever longer. Colleagues grow grey; everyone else looks like they just graduated from middle school. I used to console myself by calculating that I still had at least 2 5 more years to go, which made the end point seem very far off. But, now that would mean I’d live to an unrealistically old age, a concept supported by neither family history nor actuarial tables. I’m reminded of Einstein’s summary of his Theory of Relativity: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour." I guess I’ve been having too much fun. But that can’t go on forever. My immortality would not be good for the planet. It’s not sustainable. At the same time that medical advances have
Keep reading