Shortly after I wrote this post, I learned that three of the baby turkeys were hit and killed by a vehicle on the busy street in front of our house. Afterward the mother turkey sat in our yard for hours with the surviving (unharmed) poult. Neighbors looked for the fifth (missing) baby in case it was injured and hiding somewhere, but no one found anything.
I really enjoyed watching these interesting creatures over the last month, and it was amazing to see how fast the poults grew from day to day. Several neighbors commented about how watching the little turkey family brought them so much joy. I hope the surviving youngster stays out of traffic and will return in the future to raise a family of its own.
Here’s my original post:
Turkey poults are capable of surviving on their own shortly after hatching, but they rely on their parents to teach them important things like where to find food and protection.
Our neighborhood poults stayed with their mother for weeks, but as they got bigger they started to experiment more with their surroundings. For the first week or so, when mom stopped, everyone stopped and they would all lie in a pile in the sun together or peck under the bird feeders together. But as the days went by the poults started wandering off into flowerbeds or foraging a little further away from the pack. One day I watched one of the youngsters fly up to my platform feeder which is 5 feet off the ground. He (she?) seemed quite pleased with himself.
Once he was there he didn’t really seem all that interested in the nuts or seeds. I think it was more of a flying experiment. Turkeys roost in trees at night which is really hard to imagine when you see how large the birds are up close. One day I watched the poults take turns jumping on some dead arborvitae branches that were close to the ground. They were quite unsteady and seemed to be having trouble clinging on tight with their big feet.
According to The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds site, our turkeys should eventually join a larger group of turkeys consisting of several other hens and their broods. It says, “Winter broods sometimes exceed 200 turkeys.”
Let’s hope that doesn’t happen in my yard…