So it has been four or five days since Mom Turkey and her four younguns decided that our backyard was home. When they first came, I saw them just before letting Manny out, just averting a bloody massacre.
The first and second days, I did get to see the four little ones try to fly, and they could only get four or five feet off the ground. Within the last three days, boom! They can shoot right on up to the tops of my tallest trees.
So every morning, I talk a look-see walk, and if they’re not in the yard, I let Manny have the run of his kingdom. We had one close call when I missed seeing that they were in my blackberry patch. Manny, however, did see them. Chaos and mayhem, but no blood. That was how I found out the babies can fly.
Now the routine is I take a casual look around before letting the four legger out. Mrs Turkey has spent big chunks of the last two days roaming wider, especially across the road to the pond for water. They make the rounds of the backyard to dig in my manure pile, and then rape my wild black raspberries which are just now ripening. Oh well. That’s what I get for pruning, weeding, mulching, and watering them. I think they need them more than me.
As a side note, chipmunks and squirrels do more damage in the garden than this huge bird with her four foot plus wingspan. I cought her delicately walking through my poblano peppers, suggested she get outta there, and she did not bend a single plant.
Wherever they roam in the afternoon, at about eight o’clock, she calls her brood from somewhere over by the creek, and she flies way up into the river birch right outside the back bedroom windows. Then, one by one, the four little guys, who are about pheasant sized now, fly up and join her. All this is done with Manny sitting at full attention at the base of the tree.
There is one of the four who is the laggard, or the one with the independent streak. He is always 15 or 20 feet behind the others, when they’re foraging in the backyard. Naturally, his three siblings are already tucked under Mom’s wing up there when he finally joins them.
I took this from my daughter’s bedroom window just before sundown. I wish the resolution was better, but you can see a couple heads on the left watching me watching them.
View attachment 1590904I think that even with Manny, Mrs Turkey knows that our backyard is safe from coyotes and raccoons, and this is a safe place for her kids. At least I hope so. We’re really enjoying this.
I mentioned to Mrs Fleschwund that it sure didn’t look very comfortable perched way up on that skinny limb. She said maybe she chooses a skinny, wobbly limb knowing that she’d feel a coon trying to climb out on that limb. I think she may be right. Turkeys are not dumb.
The last couple of years, I have been meticulously working through my little woods on my hands and knees about this time of the season. I am pulling or cutting the obnoxious species of perennial weeds and trees before they drop seeds, which, over time, leaves space and sunlight for the dozens of oak and hickory seedlings I’ve planted under the walnut and cherry trees. I was using this knife when I heard Mom Turkey calling bedtime over my shoulder. It startled me.
View attachment 1590905Good night, porch.
Keep the updates coming!
I love Micarta Monday! Great looking 74 Jon, that brown burlap is fantastic! 
