Well it finally happened. Happened just the other day. Day I’ve been waiting for since….
OK, so maybe it hasn’t been very long. Two or three years at the most. But forty years ago, if somebody had told me that one day there would be a flock of 35 Wild turkeys standing in the street in front of my house I would have asked them to give me the name of their dealer because this guy was selling some really, really good stuff.
Half a century ago, reporting the sighting of a Wild turkey in New Jersey and hallucination were synonymous. Even into the mid-seventies, the birds were limited only to the extreme northeastern portion of New Jersey and this small population had only established itself in the 60’s—from birds crossing over from Pennsylvania.
Some authorities dispute the veracity of pre-1977 reports, the year the New Jersey Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife began re-introduction efforts. But I saw my first New Jersey turkeys in 1975. At the home of the former mayor of Hardwick, Township. His name was Olie. He hated the Federal Government and any visitor that entered his home was treated to a nonstop harangue about the “bastards” who had appropriated his land for the Gateway National Recreation Area.
But this was a small price to pay (the harangue, not the land) for the privilege of seeing real, bonafide, Wild Turkeys coming out of the Kittatinny Woodlands to forage at Olie’s bird feeders. Which I did. A whole flock of big, cagy, bronze-colored emblems of American Wilderness.
It was awesome. It…
Was about a decade later that we started the World Series of Birding and getting Wild Turkey on our list meant going about 30 miles out of our way to a house in Chester, New Jersey where the birds were also coming to a feeder.
It was still out of the way. But in just ten years, the birds had expanded from the Kittatinny Ridge into Morris County. It was sometime in the late 80’s that I saw my first bird in Cape May County (the bird was southbound in the northbound lane of the Garden State Parkway) and by the 90’s, turkeys had become widespread across South Jersey—a tribute to the restocking efforts of NJ Fish and Game and the New Jersey Wild Turkey Federation.
Three years ago this spring I lived a long anticipated milestone. I heard Wild Turkeys gobbling at Turkey Point, New Jersey—the first time that sound had been heard there in over 150 years. And just this fall, I noted that a flock of birds had started roosting just down the street from our Delaware Bayshore town—about a mile from our house.
Not a surprise. There was maturing woodland nearby, open fields, and a stand of conifers for roosting. All the restocking efforts on the planet would have been for naught if it weren’t for the fact that New Jersey’s forest habitat has been undergoing decades of regeneration.
Heck, the birds are now so common that they have become a bane to gardeners and a highway hazard. While riding my bicycle I have more than once had to navigate a zig-zag path through a flock of birds.
I don’t know if anyone on a bicycle has ever been killed by a flying turkey but I do know of one instance when a motorcyclist was taken out by twenty pounds of emblematic wilderness.
But as I was returning home, I passed a flock of turkeys strutting toward town. They were already on the outskirts, a mere quarter mile from home.
That’s threshold as far as I’m concerned and I was already deep in the mental writing of this article when a very excited Mrs. Dunne walked in the door and announced that there was a flock of turkeys standing in the street in front of our house.
We live right in the middle of the town! To get there the birds had to cross a dozen yards, bypass chained and unchained dogs, and avoid who knows how many work-bound commuters on their way to…
Well, who knows? They might be en route to your place right now.
So this Holiday, in addition to good health, good friends, and a very tasty centerpiece to attend to I had one more very good reason to express Thanks Giving. I live in an age when Wild Turkeys once again flourish in New Jersey.
And nobody is going to ask you what you’ve been smoking if you report seeing one.