We anticipate another long scrabble game tonight. We’ll be dining on Venison/beef chili served over angel-hair pasta. The chili has been touched up in flavor by the addition of a bottle of Harpoon IPA and two squares of Lindt Chocolate with chili.
As postulated, at 1521, a 23.05 MPH gust just blew through. The wind is much easier to tolerate when it is still daylight. Loki is neither a gun dog nor a wind dog. Someone has been firing a large caliber rifle this afternoon and she is not happy about that. The wind will have her even more spooked.
The single turkey that grazed here last spring has been returning once or twice a day. We discovered that it seems to roost on the east side of the creek, probably on our back property. Its return means that we must not let Loki chase it or frighten it. It also means we have to check which door we use to go outside.
Gloria called me into the office this afternoon. There were turkeys all over the back yard where she’s been putting out food for the single turkey. We both stood at various windows, trying to get decent photographs through screened windows. The flock was fun to watch. There were at least two pecking orders, one based upon size and the other on something else. They chased each other back and forth. One group began to leave but changed its collective mind. They milled around for about an hour, scratching up the ground and feeding steadily. Both of us counted birds, not easy to do with their constant chasing and shoving. We were visited by 11 turkeys today.
Then they decided that it was really time to leave. One-by-one they went down to the bank of the creek and flew an explosive short hop to the other side. They are huge birds and able to fly quite well. Unlike their domesticated cousins, becoming airborne is critical to their survival. Even knowing how well they fly, it is still fun to watch them. I managed, only by luck, to slide a camera out the door and trigger a burst mode just as one flew through a corner of the camera CCD receptor’s image acquisition field. That blur in the upper left corner is the wing motion of an approximately 25 pound turkey.
This image was taken using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7 in burst mode. There was an unknown degree of physical telephoto applied and framing was entirely “point, push, and hope.” To provide some degree of perspective, the vertical pole on the right is about 30 feet right diagonal, the stream bank where the two grounded birds are watching is about 50 feet front, and the creek is about ten feet across at the point where the right-most turkey is standing. As I write this, the creek has risen enough to cover the downstream (leftward) portion of the downed tree in front of the turkeys.
Gloria immediately took twice as much turkey scratch food as she usually broadcasts and scattered it so that the flock will find more food when they return.
To all a good night!
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