Mike in the Wild

I had never witnessed a wild turkey in Prescott until last summer while I was on a run.  It was a first-time encounter, and one I couldn't repeat when I drove back to the same spot with my camera two hours later.  Before that, the closest I'd gotten to the possibility of seeing any of the birds was when I ran into two hunters with bows and arrows and who were on the lookout for turkeys on Spruce Mountain ten miles away.  However this year it's a completely different story with numerous turkey sightings not only in my neighborhood but in my own yard.  It was while running along Javelina Trail above nearby Camp Emmanuel Pines that I saw my first flock this year.  I counted at least three adults and around a dozen juveniles.  A couple of weeks later I encountered a similarly-sized flock two miles away and much lower on the trail.  After recounting the experience to a neighbor a little while later, she soon observed a completely different flock on her stre...

Besides the bald eagle, no bird is more associated with the United States than the turkey.  After all, we have a national holiday, Thanksgiving Day, that while not actually dedicated to the bird, is renowned for the accompanying feast that serves it stuffed and roasted, headless on a platter.  And it is a popular myth that one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, prefered the turkey over the eagle as the national symbol of the new republic.   More factual is that the turkey has an historic range that covers much of North America, not just the eastern seaboard.  The Pilgrims in New England weren't the only humans to dine on this fowl, as much earlier residents, especially those in central Mexico, domesticated it for consumption centuries before the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock.  But in all too typical fashion, mainly white settlers over hunted this game bird, extirpating it from much of the continent. However the turkey is such a popular ga...