Turkey Crossings

Or should it be "turkeys crossing?"  ProfessorRoush came across this delightful family troupe on his way to a local Iris sale early Saturday morning.  I hope everyone appreciates the pictures, blurry though they are, because taking them made me miss the mad initial rush of iris fanatics into the piles of iris starts, and thus I missed out on all the best iris cultivars.  Certainly the drivers of the two cars that passed me as I was stopped in the middle of the road and taking pictures with my iPhone must have thought that I was a mad as a hatter.

The Wild Turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, is native to North America, although by a quirk of history it was named "turkey" because the trade routes from North America to Britain in the 1500's were routed through Constantinople, and thus the British associated the bird with the country, Turkey, and the name stuck.  Wild Turkeys are certainly prevalent in Kansas, and I often find them visiting my garden in early Spring, although sightings this time of year, when they are keeping their broods to the woods, are unusual.  They don't seem to harm my garden (with the sole exception of one previous incident noted here) , and they can be quite entertaining as they strut from bed to bed.

If you are the sole remaining American that hasn't heard yet, Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the Wild Turkey the national bird because he thought the Bald Eagle was lazy for stealing fish from other birds.  It is unfortunate in some ways that Wild Turkeys didn't win out over the Bald Eagle.  Turkeys get a bad rap for being stupid, but that's just because of our impressions of their big, fat domesticated cousins.  Wild Turkeys are exceptional citizens and good parents.   Just take, for example, the wisdom exhibited by the three hens in this covey.  They've kicked the bothersome polygamous males out of the group and they are sharing the burden of herding and henpecking the five youngsters, much like the soccer moms of our own species.  As I drove up on them, and by them, they kept the little ones in the center, pushed them to the edge, and then put themselves between their offspring and my car, offering their last feathers as protection.  Obviously the poults are not yet into the turkey equivalent of their rebellious teens or the hens wouldn't have been quite as blindly devoted.

These Wild Turkey's are probably the Rio Grande subspecies (Meleagris gallopavo intermedia) because of their geographic location and the buff, light tan color of the tips of the tail and lower back feathers.  They have longer legs than other subspecies, presumably better adapted for the tall grasses of the prairie, although I don't know if their legs are longer so they can walk better among the grass or because long legs make the females more attractive to males for other reasons ("Don't preen for that one Fred, her legs are so short and stubby that the grasses cover up her tail feathers").  Darwin's Natural Selection is still likely active though, although our human reasoning may fail in understanding the true mechanisms.  Heck, it's a well-known fact that most human males prefer human females with long slender legs over short stubby ones, and no one really knows why (I'm going to refrain here for my own good from the usual side reference to Mrs. ProfessorRoush).   Human females don't spend much time strutting in the grasses these days, so the height of the prairie grass probably isn't the driving issue. Well, I don't think so, anyways.

Turkey Trauma

I've long held that the Kansas Flint Hills provide the ultimate challenges for gardeners, whether it be from hail, high winds, ice storms, clay soil, summer drought, below zero temperatures, prairie fires, locust plagues, or just a vengeful Jehovah.  You name the catastrophe-maker in your own garden, and I bet I can match it here in Kansas.  

 One garden scourge that I hadn't counted on when I moved out onto the prairie, however, was the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), an American native much more adapted to the prairie than I or most of my shrubs.  The picture at the right was taken early in June several years back and approximately 4 feet from my front door in the midst of my front garden bed.  The two vibrant males here were battling for an invisible female in the way of males of many species during early summer. Although they are normally cautious birds who run or fly at the first sign of danger, these two old boys were so oblivious to their environment that you could have hit them over the head with a club.  If you've been to a public pool anytime during early June, you can observe similar behavior in the teenagers of our own species. 

Unfortunately these particular turkeys were having their little tussle all over two variegated red twig dogwoods (Cornus alba variegata) that I had been nursing along for several years.  According to Wikipedia, the males heads turn red when ready to fight and blue when excited, the blood-engorged flopping wattles and snoods displaying their ardor. It is obvious we were in fight mode here as it has been some time since I've seen something so engorged and so red in my garden.  Seen in the background on the picture at left, neither dogwood survived being stomped on for several minutes by the 15-20 lb. skirmishers.   

I have since tried several other shrubs in those spots, including a couple of holly, but nothing quite perked my interest as much as the dogwoods. So this year and $100 later, I'm back with two more, this time with a more specific and I hope hardier cultivar,  Cornus alba ‘Ivory Halo’, pictured and circled at the left.  So far, one entire season into the repeat experiment, both survive and the turkeys are staying down in the prairie grass out of the cultivated landscape.

So, all those gardeners out there who gnash teeth and bemoan their bad luck;  anybody else had a shrub die by turkey attack?  Welcome to the Flint Hills and my gardening life.