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.