On Sunday afternoon, at 2:30 I looked out the front window and saw large, dark shapes in the island. I had to study them for a bit, then realized they were numerous BIG dark turkeys. Currently there are four vizslas in the house. Bobbe, Trooper and Check are ours. Scout belongs to a family that ran away to Hawaii for three weeks, leaving their red-headed sweetie with us. I let Bobbe, Scout and Trooper in from the back yard and within seconds Bobbe spotted the birds. She commenced barking at the dining room window and the others joined in, including Check who had been resting on the couch. This noise had an effect on the birds. The turkeys left the island, creating a line, nose to tail, biggest bird to smallest bird, heading southeast. I kept watching as they stepped single file, counting each big, dark turkey as it came into view. I was surprised to see SIX.
I figured Pax and my boys most certainly saw these birds. Pax’s paddock is metres from the island and the boys are to the west of Pax.
At 3:00 Bill and I brought in the horses. Pax was in the southeast part of his paddock, closer to the driveway fenceline, beyond the trees fenced in paddock. He was looking east. Bill said, “Pax would have been happy to back up all the way to the gate. He preferred maintaining a lookout to the east.”
When we were done with the lower barn I drove Bill back to the house and dropped him off at the front door. He did some tracking. He came into the house and announced, “The turkeys came from Ole’s paddock which is north of Pax’s, across the driveway, to the island, across the driveway, east to Soc’s and Picasso’s paddock and into it, travelling (on foot, turkeys are crappy flyers) east across the paddock.”
It would be interesting to back-track the birds from Ole’s paddock to learn where they’d come from.
Saturday Pax’s owner, Ron, emailed everyone on the farm inviting them to join him on a trail ride. The weather forecast was predicting minus seven which was a heat wave compared to the minus 30 and minus 28’s we’d been experiencing. However, overnight the snow fell and the wind gusted to 70 kilometres per hour with a promise that these conditions would persist through the weekend. Sunday morning Ron emailed that he’d come later in the day and ride in the arena.
I figure that anyone on a trail ride Sunday afternoon would have had an interesting outing. Even if the riders didn’t encounter the turkeys, the horses would have smelled that the birds had been there and I’m pretty sure the horses would have had an opinion about the smell!
Later:
I received emails from three friends suggesting where our six turkeys came from.
1. Judy wrote, “Those turkeys were around Wyndstone all summer!” (Wyndstone is two kilometres north of our farm, south of the 16th Sideroad.)
2. Jan wrote, “Hate to say this, but I had a mother and her chicks here all last summer and last saw them about two weeks ago in my woods. They roost about twelve feet up in the trees. Maybe they are moving up in the world and prefer your place!!!” (Jan’s farm is ten kilometres east and north of our farm.)
3. Diana wrote, “Yesterday we counted eighteen turkeys on the manure pile.” (This farm is south of Wyndstone and about 1200 metres north of our farm.)
