Mick Hartley

This, I admit, surprised me: wild turkeys in the suburbs of Boston (via).

July 20, 9:31 a.m., Rawson Road: Caller reports 18 turkeys in her backyard. “Something must be done,” caller says. “It’s just not right.” Requests animal control officer.

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Wild turkeys – the official game bird of Massachusetts – are impressive animals that can grow to be roughly 20 pounds and 4 feet tall. By 1851, they had been eliminated from Massachusetts, a victim of hunting.

“We were turkey-less for many years,” said Wayne Petersen, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Important Birds Area Program. “And then we decided it would be quite nice to get them back on the landscape.”

Efforts to revitalize the state’s turkey population between 1911 and 1967 failed. Then, in 1972 and 1973, the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife released 37 turkeys in the Berkshires. These turkeys survived and bred. And between 1979 and 1996, wildlife officials trapped more than 500 turkeys in the Berkshires and released them elsewhere in the state.

Biologists were pleased; today’s turkey population in Massachusetts lingers around 20,000. But Marion Larson, an information and education biologist at MassWildlife, said officials had not counted on the turkey’s appetite for suburban – and even urban – living.

“That was something that surprised us,” Larson said. “Who knew? The last time there were turkeys in Massachusetts there weren’t a whole heck of a lot of suburbs.”

I hadn’t realised how elegant they are. That crack in the pavement (sorry, sidewalk) looks at first glance like a cane under the wing. All the bird needs is a monocle…