Backyard Turkeys – Copyright (c) 2012 Robert D. Vickers, Jr.
The afternoon of Friday, 28 December 2012 was cold and gray with a light rain falling. My son, who was visiting for the holidays, happened to notice a large number of wild turkeys (which I have since learned is called a rafter) crossing our back yard. I counted forty-four and there may have been a few more that I couldn’t see. They ambled along, scratching up the leaves to uncover insects, seeds, and nuts.
Believe it or not, a hundred years ago wild turkeys were almost extinct. In the late 1800s the clearing of land for farming combined with unregulated hunting reduced an estimated population of five million to just thirty thousand by the beginning of the twentieth century. During the last half of the 1900s a concerted effort of wildlife biologists and conservationists has brought the wild turkeys back from the brink.
A rafter of wild turkeys – Copyright (c) 2012 Robert D. Vickers, Jr.
