Sorry I can't help you, Sherry, but *be careful* around
that Big Bird....several times lately I see several different turkies
chasing cops into their cruisers (not around here;
turkeys would've frozen their butts off outside here) and
it was funny to watch, but not funny if you were the cop
trying to catch "vicious turkeys" in a nonpopulated area.
Don't let her bite you (or whatever, if they don't have teeth).
It's a long time till Thanksgiving....do they eat chickenfeed?

Yep, give her a little shed and corn-feed and water you'll have a funny
little turkey friend for a while.  She might even attract a mate and then
you'd have little chicks.  Might be fun.

Jill

Hi, Are you sure that the turkey is a female? I live in the middle of
the Poconos in Pa. and we have lots of wild turkeys..... The ladies seem
to be more drab and brown looking. This is just a guess as I am no
expert.....

 Thomas' Mom, Hazel

                                   
 

I meant to mention the Irises, too!  Gorgeous flowers.

Jill

Yes, stunning.  One of my favorite flowers.  They don't bloom up here
for another couple of weeks.

Theresa
Stinky Pictures: http://community.webshots.com/album/125591586JWEFwh
My Blog: http://www.humanitas.blogspot.com

The irises caught my eye, too. They are gorgeous.
My mother also grew irises, and I think of her every time I see an iris. I
always thought the purple ones smelled like rootbeer.
Annie

...> Nikki has been known to stalk pheasants. I try to ask her what she

Some years back we lived on a couple of acres surrounded by a lot of land.
One of cats, Josh, prided himself on being quite the hunter, as well as
defender of the territory.  He was a huge cat, 22 pounds (9.9 kg), and I saw
him chase the neighbor's Labrador retriever back home one day.
Josh was perfectly capable of catching a pheasant, leaving behind a pile of
feathers and feet and a beak, and come inside, insisting he was starving and
should be fed immediately.  In the spring he would sit under the trees, just
waiting for a baby bird to drop into his mouth.  Ugh!
Anyway, one day a flock of strange looking birds appeared in our pasture.
They were bigger than a pheasant, but smaller than a turkey.  They had tiny
heads compared to their bodies.  We later determined that the must have been
guinea hens.
Josh spotted this flock of delectable looking pea-brained birds, and he was
all aquiver at the prospect of a meal.
He selected his target and inched his way forward with his belly close to
the ground.  Little by little he approached, concentrating on his target.
Little by little, the seemingly unsuspecting birds moved into a circle.
Too late, Josh looked around and realized he was surrounded.
The birds moved as one, converging on the center of the circle.
Josh fled, with the flock in hot pursuit.
Such a comeuppance it was.
But, after proving their point, the birds stopped chasing Josh and resumed
their foraging in the pasture.
Josh gave himself a good grooming with the "I meant to do that" look and
settled for a nap in a sunny spot.
The birds stuck around for a few days and then moved on.

Annie

One of my memories from my teenage years was seeing six baby quail
walking in line through our yard early one morning.  They were marked
like adults, but only about half-sized.  There wasn't any sign of
their mother, so something must have happened to her.  We were living
in a small town, about half a mile from the nearest semi-wild area (an
undeveloped flood-plain meadow), but they were walking _towards_ this
meadow, not away from it.  I never saw this batch of baby quail again,
and don't know what became of them.

When my family moved back to Nashville in 1976, we rented a house
adjoining a proposed Interstate highway route.  Houses had already
been cleared from the land, but legal battles blocked construction of
the highway for several years.  So, there was a curving corridor of
trees, bushes, and grass perhaps 300 feet wide.  We regularly saw and
heard quail there, only three miles from the center of the city.
Unfortunately, once the highway was finally built, the traffic noise
scared off the quail.

Hee hee; several posters' minds run like mine...I hate birds w/exception of
owls of all varieties. I love owls; since that's not what you got, fatten it
up and wait for
Turkey Day in Nov. Consider it a gift from Above....

They are all over the place around here.  In Feb., DH & I were driving some
of the 'back' roads around Lake Monroe (lake near Bloomington) and we saw at
least 3 different flocks in they cow pastures and not-yet-plowed
corn/soybean fields, 50 or more per flock.  Saw one, a male, near the
highway once, in full display, then some idjit honked his horn and it flew
off into the woods nearby.

This is a wild turkey, for certain.

Like wild deer, wild turkeys are making a comeback.  Last Fall I needed
to stop on the highway outside a small country town to let a flock cross
the road.  About ten years ago a wild turkey spent a spring day wandering
around the office park where I worked.  Domesticated bronze turkeys are
colored like the wild breed.  The domestic breed is pretty chunky compared
to the wild breed.  Wild turkeys are fairly streamlined and can fly.

We saw them all the time on the roads between Placerville and Diamond
Springs California when we lived up there.  We've also seen them in the
foot hills here in North Carolina, and military personnel used to see
them at Fort Campbell back in the 80s when we were stationed there.  I
understand that the wild version is wilier and meaner than the domestic
ones are.  The domestic version is mean enough.  I got chased by them
when we were visiting relatives when I was a kid.

The geese here are mean enough, they don't need to learn from turkeys.
I was driving through the neighborhood last week and saw two white geese
challenge a woman who was trying to drive into her drive way.  She eased
in at 1 mph while the gander hissed and attacked the tires on her van.
Finally, she pulled up to the garage.  She waited patiently while he
went back to eating grass with the missis, then quietly slid out of her
car.  I drove past, once again glad that we didn't buy a house by the lake.

Pam S.

Those bred for the meat industry do.

Depends on where you live.  There are many different subspecies.  In
the N. Midwest and NE deciduous forests, they are abundant.

-L.

Thanks, all for the replies. I think John is right, it is a wild turkey
that someone has fed. I think this because she went nuts when she saw
DH carrying water to the bees in a bucket, and chased the bucket.
But later in the a.m. a Tom turkey and another hen showed up. She ran
out in the pasture where they were and they all 3 ran off. Haven't seen
them since. I found out that Turkey season just opened here. So I
figure they have been flushed by hunters from wherever they usually
hang out.
I hope they come back around now and then. I think I'll buy some
chicken feed tomorrow just in case.
Thanks also for the compliments on the irises. They must be pretty easy
to grow. A friend gave me those when she thinned hers, and I just stuck
them against that old shed and some more on the south side of the
house, yellow ones and purple ones. They all need to thinned too. If
anybody wants a start of them, I bet I could mail the rizomes (sp?)
just fine when we get around to thinning them.

Sherry