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Lake Murray Horned Grebe Re: The Urban Turkey



Hi c-birders,

Left two species out of my Lake Murray epic yesterday. First is that Fish
Crows are now all around the lake, not so in January. Second, just as we
pulled back into our home cove at the end of the day, I had a great close
look at a Horned Grebe keeping close company with a Pied-billed and a trio
of coots. The grebe, like some of the loons, was just a few head feathers
short of full breeding plumage. On the boat's way out that morning, we
flushed another bird that must have been another Horned Grebe, something
mostly dark with white squares in the secondaries; I was hoping to call it
a White-winged Scoter, but looked too long-necked...

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, mjwestphal wrote:

> I've noticed in the past few years that Wild Turkey numbers around here
> seem to be growing fast and they are getting quite bold.
(snip)
> Have they lost all fear of us???

Not sure how well this translates to the mountains, but... I was just
reading about Wild Turkeys in the autobiography of my advisor, Peter
Klopfer. He mentions how the Piedmont population was a mixture of a few
truly wild birds with lots of released captive-reared ones. An academic
guest of his claimed that they reacted differently to hunter's turkey
calls: the truly wild birds would duck their heads down in response, but
the captive-reared ones would perk up. Maybe Marilyn should try this with
her birds... Hunter-birders out there, ever heard of or observed any
quirks like this?

Good birding,

Josh



Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/