{"id":9498,"date":"2014-01-07T06:11:14","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T14:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9498"},"modified":"2014-01-07T09:06:05","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T17:06:05","slug":"wild-turkeys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9498","title":{"rendered":"Wild Turkeys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I would rather have Wild Turkeys roaming my yard than Canada Geese. Alas, the geese are the far more likely visitors. Yet, turkeys are here, having begun their colonization of the area from the south nearly a half century ago. Most locals merely view them as a delightful curiosity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sunday, I watched three toms foraging about a kilometre from my home. I am sure they were aware of me, but as long as I didn&#8217;t crowd them, they seemed comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>Our local Wild Turkey is a\u00a0Merriam&#8217;s, a subspecies with dark iridescent feathers. The long feathery beard that hangs from the breast is a characteristic of all male turkeys.\u00a0<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9502\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/turkey140105as.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Usually, the turkeys kept their heads low as they foraged. This one looked up.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9500\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/turkey140105cs.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It was after the snowberries that abound in the woods at this time of the year.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9501\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/turkey140105bs.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I suspect that in a beauty contest for birds, the Wild Turkey would lose big time&#8212;this bird is not a <a title=\"Swan again\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9280\">swan<\/a>.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9499\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/turkey140105ds.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I would rather have Wild Turkeys roaming my yard than Canada Geese. Alas, the geese are the far more likely visitors. Yet, turkeys are here, having begun their colonization of the area from the south nearly a half century &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9498\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9498"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9517,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9498\/revisions\/9517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}