Before the rain arrived, our pre-dawn morn­ing began abruptly with a noisy debate between wild turkeys and a neigh­bor’s dog. Not our typ­i­cal morn­ing ser­e­nade on a late spring day in Cape Cod!

We’ve begun to see turkeys graz­ing in our salt marsh. It’s a healthy and well-flushed habi­tat, a favored fish­ing ground for herons and osprey look­ing for small fish or crabs.

As seen through my grand­fa­ther’s vin­tage binoc­u­lars, wild turkeys are really quite ugly, espe­cially when com­pared to herons or egrets. They are begin­ning to over­run this sea­side vil­lage. Turkeys are also becom­ing a haz­ard to dri­vers when the toms decide it’s time to escort their large and slow-mov­ing harems across a busy road.

When annoyed by the turkeys, I remind myself of their impor­tance to the early Pil­grims who set­tled Cape Cod and nearby Mass­a­chu­setts towns. And of course, their domes­ti­cated cousins grace our table each Thanks­giv­ing!

Despite the turkeys, bird watch­ing this spring has been quite col­or­ful and diverse. While walk­ing or kayak­ing, we’ve seen:

• Ospreys fish­ing or feed­ing their babies
• Oys­ter catch­ers
• Wil­lets
• Great blue herons
• Great white herons
• Green herons
• Snowy egrets
• Bal­ti­more ori­oles (shown here)
• Car­di­nals
• Goldfinches
• Swans
• Wild turkeys

And of course, the nearly ubiq­ui­tous robins, chick­adees, gulls, terns, crows, spar­rows, mal­lards, Canada geese, mourn­ing doves.

We’ve heard but not seen the owls that hunt in the nearby nature pre­serve, a 100-acre con­ser­va­tion area that includes wood­lands, salt marsh and a brack­ish river fed by Pop­pones­set Bay.

Sum­mer sea­son has not yet begun, so the birds still dom­i­nate the local waters. They share the bay with kayaks, jet skis and boaters mostly on the week­ends, although that will soon change.

By then we’ll have returned to Wash­ing­ton, but will miss the seabirds and song­birds we so love here on Cape Cod.