Early this morning we were woken up by the sound of turkeys gobbling and we looked outside to discover that we had an entourage of baby visitors.
This story actually started 6 weeks ago, when we became aware of a female turkey hen who had laid 12 eggs just by our neighbour's cedar rail fence.
The hen laid 12 eggs and she sat on them for approximately 28-30 days before we discovered the broken shells.
We have never witnessed a wild turkey sitting on a nest before and we weren't exactly sure if her nest had been raided by a predator or not.
This is what "Momma Turkey" actually looks like when she's not splaying her wings flat to cover all her eggs:
She's a good size bird and you can see her carefully watching to see if we would be a threat to her or her young poults (which are what baby turkeys are called).
Momma is teaching them how to forage for their food.
They aren't the best photographs in the whole world because turkeys don't tend to stay still very long but you can see their body shape and how small they are at approximately 2 weeks old.
Congratulations to Momma Turkey and her little ones. 12 eggs were laid and this morning, I have counted 10 poults running around.
I consider this a big win for Mother Nature too!
~ Rebecca Ryan
