And the second shot showing more of the flock across the road.

When they get to the back yard of the brick home, they turn left, cross the road, and melt into the shelter belt of trees bordering a ginormous crop field. It was wheat this year.

Don't they leave a mess in your yard?

Black oil sunflower seeds? Wow, Caroline, you put out an elegant spread! Those birds are fun to watch, huh?

I feed cracked corn and/or chicken scratch and/or generic wild bird seed based on what I read in the linked website....

"Provide cracked corn, millet, milo, wheat or other seeds and grains. Wild turkeys are not picky about their foods and will readily eat less expensive birdseed mixes or will eat the waste seed scattered beneath bird feeders."

Here is a link that might be useful: What Do Turkeys Eat?

ThunderBoltBee, They are amazing! Turkeys; they're not just a side dish for cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce! LOL

I don't use any millet mixes in my bird feeders because I have to battle the non-native English House Sparrows (HoSP) tooth, beak, and nail. Millets attract them like magnets.

I have a Purple Martin colony (April-August), nesting tree swallows, chickadees, nuthatches, nearby bluebirds, and various other cavity nesters that the HoSP love to kill. They will go box to box breaking eggs and killing chicks to clear "their" territory of other cavity nesters.

I trap all them all breeding season and have managed to clear my native birds' immediate nesting territories of these pests.

While the HoSP will eat black oil sunflower seed, if they're starved to it, it's not their favorite food so I offer only BOSS. All the native songbirds, and native cavity nesters (insectivores excluded) love it best.

I use different types of feeders, making it easier for the native birds to pick the one they are most comfortable using, but all the feeders hold the same BOSS. I also offer suet blocks; I usually make my own. During the coldest part of the winter I offer shelled peanuts in a special feeder that only allows them to pull out one peanut at a time. That cuts down on waste, too.

Of course, the doves (and turkeys) and other birds love to glean from the ground, too.

And my turkey flock - they are real turkeys. I bought 50 lbs. of cracked corn last winter. They wouldn't touch it. I even did tests. A big pile of corn near a smaller pile of BOSS. The cleaned up the BOSS and turned their beaks up at the corn. Wes finally took it out to a field and dumped it for the deer. It was gone the next morning!

From now until deep snow time the turkeys will have to glean under the feeders and be content with a quart or so of "extra" BOSS on the ground. Once they are in distress I'll start with the two-gallon bucket a day limit.

One reason I think they are so spoiled is that I am surrounded by thousands of acres of sunflowers, wheat, soybeans, etc. There are corn fields, too, but they love to hang out in the other crops. I guess they think the corn is for the deer and raccoons!

You are so lucky to have these in your yard, Caroline.

Thanks for the pictures.

A few weeks ago I had 17 of them in my yard...mom, dad and various sized babies. Were wonderful to watch, they kept going over the fence and back in, sat on top of my shed and fence posts and in general having a fine time. But one of my dogs loves to roll in critter poop, so I had to clean her up each time she went out after the turkeys left for better hunting grounds.

I have a 'curosity" question.(and no glasses). Near us, our boarded horse has tons of ticks. Where he lived with DD's XDH....with 40 to 50 horses, the horse (white) never has had ticks, even tho elk are among the wild life there. Don't know about deer, and I know they are great hosts for ticks.. I am wondering if it is because of the very large, and so entertaining, flock of turkeys that ply the acreage.

I don't know if the turkeys have anything to do with it, but I would think it would be if there were woods nearby more than the turkeys. My horse is half white and he always seems to get more ticks on him than the other darker colored horses in his pasture.

A few weeks ago we were riding in the woods and about 6 or 7 adult turkeys came out of the brush and ran down the trail. Thankfully they were running away from us and not towards us. The horses watched, but didn't get frightened by them.

Caroline, I forgot to mention how neat I think it is that you "entertain" so many turkeys. It is always exciting to me to see them in the wild - or even in a neighborhood.

This post was edited by murraysmom on Sun, Nov 2, 14 at 18:01

Caroline, your turkeys remind me of our son's wedding two years ago in September in Big Sur, California. The "resort" where we stayed in cabins had quite a contingent of wild turkeys among the redwoods and on the lawns that were accustomed to people feeding them. You could walk right up to them. Our little grandsons were sick but came to their uncle's wedding, so seeing the turkeys was a treat to perk them up. One guest had a lot of crackers that she was feeding to them from her cabin's balcony, and she shared many of them with our 5 year old so that he could feed the turkeys. It was cute to see them so attentive to the little boy with the crackers.

Neat turkeys, I'm so glad you are hospitable to them. Do you have a zoom lens to see one up close?