Turkey Time

Monday is opening day of Spring turkey season.  This coincides with mating season.  It is the time of year when the Toms strut their stuff in order to impress the hens.

They puff up their feathers, spread their fans, and gobble to call in the hens.  If you've never been in the woods to hear it, this video from the Dept of Wildlife captures it pretty well Ohio Dept of Wildlife Video of Gobbler

These trailcam shots are catching mature gobblers in their strut.  You can tell that they are mature from their tail fan.

 A jake (one year old male) has a fan that is longer in the center and shorter on the edges.  It's beard (feathers from the chest) is shorter and it's spurs are quite short.

 This is a fan from a mature Tom.  It is the same length all the way around.  And the beard is quite a bit longer.  You can see the spurs on its feet.

In this shot, there's a hen in the front right and the gobbler is strutting to put on a show for her.  He also tilts his tail fan from left to right.

 You can see the beard coming out of his chest.  As he gets worked up putting on his show, his head changes colors going to red and blue.  In order to hunt these birds, you have to call like a hen and attract them to come strutting in toward you.  Shotgun range is 40 yards or less.  Their eyesight is amazing and they can spot any movement.

 This one isn't worked up yet.

Two of them going into the strut.

A jake.

 They spend the night on the roost (up in a tree).  They fly down about sunrise and spend the rest of the day on the ground.

 The hens build their nest on the ground and lay one egg a day for about two weeks.  Then they sit on the nest until they hatch the poults.

Mature gobbler strutting.

Probably a jake.

 Turkey hunting usually coincides with redbuds and dogwood blooming.  The redbuds are just getting started.

 They should be peaking next week.

Along the driveway.

 The pears are in bloom.

 This is a crabapple getting ready to pop.

 I think that these are violets.

 daffodils.

not sure.

The grass has greened up.

 Ponds are overflowing.

 I did some spot spraying of Roundup in a couple of food plots planted last Fall.

 They were spotty chicory/clover plots.

I sprayed the whole field with Butyrac in a couple of the established clover plots.

 This is what is left of the turnip field.  It's been picked clean.  Not sure what to plant this year.

 Muddy pond.

 I had a birds nest appear on the porch on top of my security camera.  Normally I would not disturb it.

 But the camera was being obstructed so I removed it and found the eggs in it.

 I put it in this tree - doubt if it will survive.  I don't know what kind of birds it was.

 We had a possum/deer standoff in the orchard.

 I'm pretty sure that the possum won.

 The deer were also fighting over the remnants of a protein block.

Biggest guy usually wins.

 I remembered where I left the missing camera.  I also got downloads of two cameras that didn't write to the sd card for some reason.

Pretty nice today.  It was up into the mid 70's by afternoon.

Nice look.

It was much colder a couple weeks ago.