Turkeys in the Park

A week or two ago I posted a picture of a snow-covered landscape. All that snow is now gone again. It goes like this for several weeks, usually until mid- to late December; snow, melt, snow, melt. This weekend I am doing a program at the park about Wild Turkeys, and I'm hoping for good weather.

Great Wild Turkey habitat

Looking for turkey signs

We have quite the rafter (a grouping of turkeys) here and it's fun to teach the kids about them, and then go out and try to find where they are hanging out, while attempting to call them using our homemade turkey calls. Last year they were on the golf course, the year before in an open field. I haven't seen much of them this year, but I'm confident they will turn up. I've seen them out in the fields on my drive in to work. So they are here.

Wild Turkey Tracks in the snow

Wild Turkey Feather

It's always fun to find they turkeys themselves, but if for some reason we don't, we do find their tracks, feathers and droppings. Did you know male droppings look distinctly different from female droppings?

Female Dropping (cork screw shaped)

Male Dropping ("J" shaped)

I'll let you know if we see any this year.