In Blog, General

Why would a mature gobbler hop on our house deck and peck repeatedly on the sun room door window at this time of year?

This seemed like strange behavior, so we sent an email to our friend Gary Sefton, an excellent turkey hunter. He has a great book on turkeys and turkey hunting: Lessons Learned From The Magnificent Bird

We asked Gary, “Why would a mature gobbler hop on our house deck and peck repeatedly on the sun room door’s window at this time of year? It has done this three consecutive days. It does not act like it’s pecking at its reflection and isn’t in a fighting mood, or doesn’t act like it is.

“The gobbler seems more curious about whatever it may be seeing inside the sun room,” we said. “It bobs and weaves and pecks high, low, left and right. Maybe there’s a Turkey Mixed Martial Arts contest coming up and it is in training for a Peck-Off.”

Gary replied: “An apparent Kamikaze that you should have dealt with during turkey season! I have seen gobblers fighting in July, so there is no cutoff date to their desire to dominate. They hang in bachelor groups year round until spring. They have pecking orders within the groups that are established through dominance (pecking) so I would enjoy the show and wait until next season.”

You will note the bird now likes our songbird feeder…likes it a lot. The lower feeder holes and tray are just the right height for it.

Now it has expanded its range to include our deck and the west windows of our sunroom. The bird spends so much time there the deck has become spotted with gobbler droppings, so we’ll need to wash the deck.

The bird has found the wildlife and wild bird water bowl set on a very short stump in the middle of our yard. He acts like he thinks he’s found a home.

There is an eight-acre weed field on the north side of our yard, so there are plenty of bugs for it to catch there, but that apparently isn’t enough.

He and a couple of hens roost now and then in some big trees in the yard.

Haven’t found any dust bath spots; haven’t looked either. But we will.

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