Sunday, December 10, 2017

Frozen turkey

A group of turkeys is apparently either a flock, or a rafter. Let's go with the latter as the word of the day. At least for me!

It looks like a rafter was up and about last night, as evidenced by their footprints all over the snow that started falling in the evening:


My friendly neighborhood rafter surely does not seem to be deterred by a few inches of snow, though. While they have made a daily appearance for several weeks now, and have spent significant amounts of time rooting around my bird feeder and elsewhere, they showed up like clockwork today after nearly seven inches of powder blanketed the region overnight.

Only this time, they stayed on the road (which had been plowed) and steered clear of the yard:



I learned a few days ago that a rafter usually has only one male. This guy was preening away to distract from the lack of food on the road surface:



Trust this one female turkey to throw caution to the wind and plow into the yard! Must have been one hungry bird:


Later in the day, I saw the entire rafter on the side of the house, where the snow had melted enough to expose some of the ground, and they had a field day raking up the soil in search of... frozen worms?!

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