Photo by Lucycat, via Flickr.
I really do love wild turkeys. They're one of my favorite birds. Whenever I have the good fortune to run across a group of them in a field, I can't help but see a bit of the Mesozoic in their behavior. For the briefest of moments, I forget myself and I don't just see one distinct species in its particular time and place. I see nature's continuity, which scoffs at our attempts to name and classify the organisms with whom we share the world. It's life, doing what it does, across the eons.
But I probably don't love wild turkeys as much as Paul Vasquez.
I like rainbows, too. Again, not as much as he does.
There is a flock of over 2 dozen wild turkeys that lives near my home in New Hampshire. In the winter I will see them in my yard all the time as they expand their territory to try to keep fed. I'd not seen them for a while since the snow melted, but just last weekend they resurfaced with babies in tow!
ReplyDeleteI've commented on this before, but I really wonder how much of the tendency to see dinosaur behavior in bird flocks is really feedback from the movie based on the book just below this blog entry. They chose to use birds as the model for their dino recreations - are we now just conditioned to think of dinos this way?
Well, I think that it is based somewhat on the JP influence, but then JP was influenced by the Ostrom/ Bakker/ Paul dinosaur renaissance, so I don't think it's entirely invalid. Although it's shaky at best to attribute modern bird behavior to dinosaurs.
ReplyDeleteI haven't come across a good flock of them in a while. Jennie and I frightened a female out of her hiding place while hiking recently, though.
I would have definitely endorsed Ben Franklin's choice of the wild turkey as national bird. Nothing against the bald eagle, though. I've seen one of those in the wild as well, and it was a stunning sight.