TURKEYS

This winter has been more severe than average, including some bitterly cold days (with air temperatures exceeding minus 20F) and substantial snow that at times reached depths of 15-18 inches.  Our subdivision includes a 10-acre woods which has been home for some time to a flock of wld turkeys.  As often as not, I hear their gobbling as I start my early morning walks, and they frequently wander through our subdivision streets foraging for food or whatever.  I have wondered how well they have fared during this difficult winter.  Not to worry.  This morning on their daily walkabout, I counted 18 of them strolling through the yard of the neighbors across the street from us.  They didn't seem to be in a hurry, so I grabbed my camera and ran out in the sunny, 30-degree weather to catch a few shots.  Here is what I got.

First a couple of group shots, mostly of toms in full display.

It wasn't realistic to try to get all of the flock in one shot, as the 18 birds were strung out across perhaps 50-60 feet, with some obscured by remaining piles of snow.  In addition, several were bunched so close together that it was difficult to distinguish individual birds.  So I focused on smaller sub-flocks, particularly of toms, which were in full display.

Here are a couple more shots of five of the toms when they mostly had their backs turned to me.

The toms were clearly "on the prowl."  Here is a tom attempting, I presume, to "court" one of the hens, who didn't seem particularly interested.

None of the toms appeared to get "lucky" at least while I was watching.

Finally, here are a couple of close-ups of toms that I cropped from wider shots.

The closest I got to the birds was about 20 yards.  Any closer and I would have felt that I was intruding on their territory and they may have moved off.  So I took these with my 70-300 mm telephoto cranked up to a full 300 mm.  Even so, I needed to do some cropping on all of the shots.

John M. Phillips