Turkey in the treetop

Not a great picture (It was almost dark when I took it), but an interesting nightly ritual to record in my journal: the nightly flight of the roosting turkeys.

Did you know that wild turkeys sleep on tree limbs? They flap (fly would be too kind a word to use) their way through the air, landing in the trees, shift around from branch to limb until they find one that suits them, and that's where they spend the night. Their perch doesn't look very secure, and I don't know how they keep from falling off after they go to sleep, especially on a windy night like this one, but they manage to stay put all night. If you were to return to the park and stand under these trees at daybreak, you could watch them flap their way back to the ground. Turkeys can fly, but they are very awkward about it, and they spend most of their days on the ground, walking around the park, pecking in the leaf litter, for little insects I suppose. When the ground is covered with snow, as it is today, you can always tell where the turkeys have been because the snow is disturbed, revealing the bare ground beneath. Turkeys are NOT handsome birds, but they are interesting. A dozen of the ungainly critters were perched in the trees along with the one that I blipped.