Alaskan Turkeys

We had a new group of 30+ birds show up in the yard the other day. That makes a total of over 60 birds going through our yard now. Thankfully not all at the same time! The strays come through twice a day, morning & evening, in small groups of 15 to 30. Only our resident 15 or so stay close to the house during the day. When they do happen to all come in at the same time, you would not believe the ruckus they cause!


Each group has a dominate hen that watches over them and keeps the group together. She also will not tolerate birds from other groups getting to close. When two groups do meet the lead hens go through a ritual of chasing, intimidation & strutting with sometimes some body slams, but other than being noisy they don't really hurt each other. Then either one will back off and run away (taking her group with her) or one will submit and the two groups will merge.
That is what happened here, and in this case these two groups of 15 or so each merged to one flock of more that 30 birds.

The group in these pictures were on their way down to the lake when the new group came in so thankfully there was no confrontation and I didn't get any photos. I wish I had because you can't imagine how overwhelming of a sight it is! These are big birds and to see over 60 of them in more or less the same place is, well unless you happen to be a turkey farmer, it's just scary!

The Turkey Wars begin!
A few days after these photos were taken the two groups did meet. The lead hens were chasing everyone all over the place, the young toms were strutting, the younger birds were in a total state of confusion, the noise was nearly deafening! Over 60 birds in our yard were darting here & there, gobbling, calling, strutting, screeching, and down right fighting! Two bloody hens had each other by the beak and I swear they were going to kill each other! When I saw how bad it was (and that one of the hens was Little Bits mom I will explain later) I tentatively tried to intervene. When they wouldn't come apart I got real worried thinking they were somehow stuck. That wasn't the case however, I got between them and they did let go but only long enough to get around me then they were right back at it! Beak to beak!! I continued to separate them but they just kept going back to the fight! At one point one of the hens wrapped her neck around the other in what looked like an attempt to strangle the other!

Somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, I realised that I was standing smack-dab in the middle of 60 very unhappy, fighting, LARGRE birds! In the back of my mind, popped up the memory of a scary movie and a little girl who got pecked by Grandma's old tom. A small voice latterly screamed "What are you doing!!" To late, "Mother Bear" had already taken over!

Anyway, I finally got the two separated and the other lead hens got the group more or less separated and with in a few minutes everyone had calmed down. (except for a small group of young toms off to the side) Little Bits found her mom (who was a little bloody but otherwise ok) which calmed me down. Little Bits and it's mom joined our resident group about a month or so ago, Little Bits was hatched way to late in the season and is still very small. In reality it has a slim chance of surviving the winter but I have become sort of partial to it because all the other birds in this group really watch over it! It's really pretty amazing to see how caring they are to each other, well with in their own group anyway.

With the war over, peace settles once again in our little corner of the world!