Turkey Time...

[yoderjac]

I've been watching these turkey for several weeks. There is clearly two dominant gobblers that have been hanging around with the harem of hens. There is also one subdominant gobbler that is generally in the same area, but often some distance away. He seems to be careful of the other gobblers. He does get with them from time to time, but is tentative.

I got a distant video this morning demonstrating this behavior and a surprise. Let's start with some background information:

The video camera is an ultraHD security camera mounting on my barn. The blind is a little over 100 yards from the barn. The last pine in the buffer strip of pines to the right of the blind is about 50 yards from the blind and the closest tree in the hardwoods to the left of the blind is about 40 yards away. The picture is a bit deceiving because tat last pine in the strip is across a small dip. Most of my observations of the birds is in the field beyond the blind. That far wood line on the other side is approximately 300 yards from the barn. That field run parallel to the buffer strip of pines and has a hump in the middle so that back corner is only easily observable from my barn area. Sorry about the video quality. I've zoomed in a lot, but you'll get the idea of the general behavior.

Video Start time 0726 – End Time 0744

You fist see the two dominant gobblers come out with a couple hen. About 1/2 way through the video, the subdominant comes out on the blind side of the dip. He observes the other birds from that distance and struts from time to time, but not a lot. After a bit the gobblers go back into the hardwoods and it appears the subdominant bird joins them. The surprise is near the end of the video when the 4th gobbler appears in the field strutting. I know from direct observation the first 3 birds are mature. I'm not sure about the 4th gobbler.

 

[yoderjac]

There was some more action this morning. Generally, over the last few weeks, the hens have been in large tight groups with dominant gobblers attending them and subdominant gobblers hanging around cautiously. Now I'm starting to see hens becoming a bit more independent of each other. They seem to be in smaller groups. Gobblers are still strutting for them. Here is about 15 minutes from this morning:

 

[yoderjac]

One of the biggest issues with the videos above is the distance from the camera. The video in the previous post starts out where you see the entire field of view of that particular security video camera. After download it to my computer, I used Adobe Premiere to pan and zoom to the general area the turkeys are using. I then pan and zoom as needed so all the birds can be seen in the video.
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The turkeys were back this morning in this general area from a few minutes after 7:00 am until about 8:45 am. It was a mix of gobblers and hens fairly dispersed, not in a tight flock. Gobblers went back and forth showing off and hens largely ignored them and continued to feed. Most of the time the gobblers were in that far field out of gun range. There were ;a few times when they are on the fringe of my guns range. Several hens came right up to the blind during this period. From time to time, the gobblers went out of the camera view to the right.

I had another camera that is pointed to the right if this one that has some overlap. I can reuse the 8MP indoor where zooming is not an issue. I ordered a new one and it came in today. Before removing the 8MP video camera, cut a short video clip of a couple minutes from this morning when the birds were in view of the 8MP camera. I zoomed in:

After replacing this video camera with a 12 MP security video camera, I captures a bit more video. In both cases, I used Adobe Premiere t zoom in. In the case of the 12 MP camera, there are no turkeys. I just zoomed in so the area covered by both camera was about the same. It is not exact but certainly enough to see the difference in resolution

 

[yoderjac]

When I reviewed this morning's footage there were no birds in the field. I typically review the video from just before 7Am until about 9AM. This shows that the birds are not following the same pattern daily. They have not left the area, they just uses the habitat differently from time to time.

I went outside this morning to water the chestnuts I'm trying to propagate and do some other stuff. I looked down at the area the birds frequent. Sure enough there was a gobbler tending a hen. I'm guessing that by this late in the morning, most breeding hens have gone to nest and this gobbler is tending a young hen that isn't nesting yet.

These birds did not immediately react to me working around the barn. I don't know if was intentional related to my presence about 150 yards away from them, or just a coincidence, but shortly after the video ends, they slowly feed toward the corner of the field in the upper left and disappear into the woods.

I just extracted a few minutes of the footage. This footage comes from the new 12mp video camera, so it is taken from a slightly different angle than some of the earlier videos: