Turkey stomp
Oh… the difference a day makes!
Last Monday, just four days ago now, the old snow on the trails around here was thoroughly pock-marked by humans.
But on my daily walk with our three-legged dog Bruno around the little mountain behind our house, in addition to the human footprints, I would also note the tracks of many four-legged creatures, as well those of a couple of wild turkeys, demonstrating that we are not alone in the forest.
As they walk, turkeys place one foot directly in front of the other, slightly dragging a toe as they go. So a single bird leaves a track in the snow that resembles a row of arrowheads strung along by a slender thread.
Fresh snow is transformational
But, by Tuesday morning, several inches of fresh snow had completely obliterated all yesterday’s tracks. As I set out with Bruno to walk once more around the mountain, this time under a brilliant blue sky it was like a new world.
No people had marked the snow. But, crossing the trail, a few tracks told of animals who had been out and about in the past twelve hours.
There were tiny tracks, like pairs of little prick marks in the snow with a line down the middle—field-mice no doubt, scurrying to and from their homes at the base of the trees. I also saw some smallish footprints, possibly a bob-cat, and larger tracks, most likely a fox.
Turkeys on the march
And then, around the backside of the mountain, I came across an amazing sight: the very recent tracks from a stampede of birds, that completely filled the ten-foot wide ski trail. A large flock of turkeys, probably about twenty birds in all, had apparently come up the hill out of the ravine to my right, and for about fifty yards along the ski trail had marched together, seemingly in lock-step. Then, bird by bird, they peeled off the trail and back down into the shelter of the ravine.
Turkeys love crabapples
The fruit on our Snowdrift crabapple lasts well into the winter, luring wild turkeys into the garden
So I know it won’t be long before turkeys appear in the garden in search of a winter treat from our crabapple trees.
Just outside the kitchen door a diminutive Sargent Crab apple (Malus sargentii) grows in the center of the herb garden.
Its branches are just a few feet up off the ground and any turkey, standing tall and stretching its out neck, can easily reach most of its persistent fruit.
A few year’s back we took the top picture of these very regular visitors to our back door.
Our Snowdrift crabapple by the pond also attracts the turkeys with its yummy winter fruit. This is a larger tree and its branches cannot be reached from the ground by a turkey. However as winter wears on, its fruit will eventually drop off, and is quickly eaten by the birds below.
And it is always fun to watch the most daring turkeys fly up into the branches where, ever so precariously, they stretch their necks out as far as they can to reach every last morsel, even right to the tips of the branches.