Monday, October 15, 2007

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

So quoth Les Nessman in "WKRP In Cincinnati," one of my favorite shows from the '70's. (Season One is now available on DVD, by the way.)

Well, Les was actually right! Although I don't think they can fly very far, certainly not when dropped from a helicopter. Lately, I've been seeing a band of about 12 turkeys, but they're starting to join up for the winter, because tonight I saw about 20 in the back yard. I saw one fly up into a tree (that's where they sleep at night), and it reminded me of last year, when I was watching a bunch of 'em in the back yard. Something startled them, and almost all of them took off into the trees. It was amazing, because they are HUGE birds. They looked like little Stealth Bombers sailing over the yard.

We had turkey babies this year, so it will be interesting to see if our winter population is up. The most I've seen in our yard is between 50 and 55. There were actually too many to count, because they kept milling around. I really like them...I think their feathers are beautiful, and I like the way they make little clucking sounds.

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