Straight Creek Valley Farm

Some folk might think that thoughts of turkey typically warm our minds on a particular late fall day.Visions of pumpkin pie, pilgrims, and turkey all mingle together as family and friends gather round to give thanks for the fall harvest, but for those of us who live along the creek, there is another turkey time.Just as our families gather together in the fall, the turkey themselves gather together along the edge of the woods in this late winter, early spring season.I have learned, as their creek neighbor, to look for them gathering together, each year, in their very own, very turkey way.

This is the season when turkey celebrate and procreate, for several weeks, during the lengthening days close to the first day of spring, the days that come right around the time of the vernal equinox.This time is the end of the winter season when daylight hours are equal to the night time, and the turkey come strutting out into the fields, displaying their big bird beauty and sounding their turkey calls.

The other morning, as I was leaving the creek, almost oblivious to the world around me because I knew that I had just enough time to make it up to court, I came around a bend in the road and saw what appeared to be twenty or more turkey spreading out into the first field.I watched as they ventured out of the woods and spilled across the wet ground.I stopped.The sight before me was magically transfixing.Patches of snow still lined the road and lay on the north side of the clumps of dirt, scattered across the field.The turkey looked like slightly angled, copper edged footballs, spilling out into the morning light.

I could see long feathered beards dangling from the chests of three large toms, and then, as I watched, the toms began to dance.They slowly spread their tail feathers until the feathers fanned out in dramatic display.Then, tails spread, they began to turn in circles, holding their wings slightly out from their bodies, with the tips just barely dragging along the damp ground, as they stomped and turned.

I could hear their muffled gobbling calls through the car's closed windows.I let the driver's side window down and could feel the chill morning air fall inside the car, but as the electric window silently lowered, I knew that the cold was well worthwhile.I not only heard the males' chortling gobble, but I heard what sounded like a drumming sound.Was that the sound of the male birds stomping the ground as they as they danced and turned before the gathered group of females?Surely the wet ground was too muddy to reverberate with a turkey stomp.I was curious, and later learned, as I scrolled through my smart phone, waiting for court to start, that the drumming I had heard through the open window, was not caused by their feet pounding on the damp soil, but was rather a mating call that the toms make to lure the females closer.The toms gather air into a special sack in their chests and then explosively expel it in a staccato drumming fashion as they turn and dance.This is the sound I had heard.

And the females had been attracted.They milled about the field, getting closer to the three toms, but just as I figured that I would sit and watch, and hopefully not be too late to court, two females, closest to the road, broke away from the milling group, and ran for the woods.In a flash, the toms folded up their tail feathers, and within the blink of an eye, every single one of the big birds was wobbling, at turkey break neck speed, across the field.They disappeared, one by one, into the woods.

I raised my window and headed up the creek to town.I knew that I could look forward, in about a month and a half, to seeing the hens leading their fluffy poults along the road and across the fields.I knew that creek turkey time really does single the start of spring.

March 10th, 2013