Gquowp-gquowp-gquowp! For the last few days we’ve been hearing a different call around the yard, coming at any time of the daylight hours. I’ve spelled it as best I can there, but it’s not an utterance with which I’m familiar. I had heard that our town had its own complement of wild turkeys but I never thought I’d see them in such a suburban setting. The nearest strip of real woods is on the canalized creek-bed a quarter-mile away and yet, gquowp….gquowp….gquowp-gquowp, now and again.
Then came the early morning sightings out the kitchen window. Preparing food in the kitchen for the morning feedings, checking out the window to see how low the finch’s thistle-seed feeder has gotten since the day before, when, just outside the front door and down between the retaining walls where the violets used to grow, a long neck and large head move cautiously forward, revealing a fairly large feathered torso on stilts, across onto the left-hand neighbor’s front yard. Up along the edge of the hedge, followed openly, about four feet back, by the right-hand neighbor’s petite tabby cat, who looks frankly astonished. Which look changes, once she sees us looking out at her, to something like “I could take that, ” as she comes back to our front walk. The turkey, like a magic trick, vanished in the short time we were watching the cat.
We saw it a couple of times in the next few days, strutting from the right-hand neighbors, across the open cul-de-sac and up the driveway du jour 
to vanish into thin air, somehow, when it reached a house. Then it seemed to have gone from the neighborhood.
Until this afternoon, gquowp….gquowp…gquowp..mumbling a couple of feet to the left of the backyard glass door. Still looking for other turkeys, I guess. I went and got the camera, hoping to get a good shot, but when I returned it had, yes, vanished, so I hurried out the front door to catch it coming down the side driveway. Peeked around the corner: nothing. Went all the way around the house the other way: nothing. Then, faintly, gquowp! Gquowp…gquowp. I went back around front, looked ’round the yard and found nothing. Gquowp-gquowp-gquowp-gquowp-gquowp! Oh, the sound was from something taller than I am, 
and there was the turkey, on the ridge of the garage, neck extended, calling and looking for other turkeys. I took a couple of shots, until it seemed uneasy. I backed away onto the porch, checked exposures quickly and went back, hoping for a closer shot or a preening or wings-extended shot. No turkey on the roof, but there it was, at the bottom of the front garden walking up across the neighbor’s lawn, on its way to vanishing again. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the thing teleports!
I hope I get some more tries, it’s a tricky critter!
Has the early spring brought you new visitors this year?
Cheers,
pete
I took my grandsons to the zoo this week and I could see that none of the animals seemed as excited to see us, as I am when an unusual animal visitor decides to come into my city yard. I might feel differently if it were a Bengal Tiger or an anteater, but I, like you, grab my camera, run outside and want to share the story of the visit with everyone.
I only wish you hadn’t tried to spell the gobble. I’m trying to make it work, but it’s not there yet. I fear it will be like a song you can’t get out of your head all day.
Hi Karol, sounds like a fun trip, hope you all had a grand time! Your comment about the animals’ response made my mind toss up a cartoonish role reversal image: one giraffe to another, “Look Martha, it’s some more of those weird, noisy draped apes! Oh bother, that one’s got a video camera, no, don’t look at it! Maybe it’ll go away.”
Well, I bet I might be similarly affected by a set of visitors that showed up 6 days a week, didn’t feed me anything and stared through the fence. *grin* And they can’t get out to stalk us around the yard, camera or no. Whew.
I guess I used my blog as some sort of adult-onset Show and Tell moment, but it’ll undoubtedly happen again; it’s fun. Even knowing that many..er lots of…er..most folks are not necessarily as thrilled as I to see the, um, aesthetic wonders of a wild turkey, it’s fun. I just wish I’d gotten better images. And I hope people will share what they see around their own places that they consider out-of-the-ordinary. I get enthusiastic about anything out of the ordinary coming around. Or even ordinary but not usually seen, such as ‘possums or raccoons, or a particularly enormous cranefly. I read too many Gerald Durrell books while growing up, I’m sure.*smile*
Sorry about leaving you stuck with the pronunciation dilemma. Actually, I was surprised: this turkey must not have been out to impress anyone, yet. It didn’t gobble at all but that gquowp sound was made as repetitive single or double weird sounds…as if a bell honked. Does that help get it out of your head? Hope so! I don’t have a means of recording the actual call, sorry…..hm unless I can find a way to get the freecycle laptop working……I need a few more hours per day!
Thanks for leaving your thoughts! Keep your camera charged!
Cheers!
pete
We’ve had a couple of roosters and some hens running around the yard. I don’t know where they come from, but I wish they would lay some eggs.
Hi James, I hope the roosters aren’t crowing the dawn atcha! I like the sounds hens make when they’re just poking about for tidbits; kinda soothing, but roosters…sheesh, lol. Hm. Pity about the lack of eggs. I wonder if a decoy fake egg or two would prove inspirational. Do chickens even GET inspired? I’m surprised they’re out and about, if I were the owner I’d be afraid of losses to dogs, raccoons or whatever. At least while there they are donating a bit of soil enrichment as they wander about, and they should be good at small insect pest removal. Not as satisfactory as a handful of eggs, to be sure, but something nearly useful
).
Thank you for coming to read and tell me of your current ..er ..fowl weather (Sorry…it was just..*there*
Cheers,
pete
Those are great pictures Pete. Turkeys are such funny looking animals. Now for my funny turkey story…Years ago when my daughter was a baby I rented this little house on a farm. Some department hatched these turkeys then let them loose in our area. They were crazy turkeys. One attacked my car one day and wouldn’t get out of the way so I wouldn’t run over it. I think they had a bit too much human interaction growing up. So this big group of them started roosting in the tree over-hanging my house every night. They’d jump on my car, to the roof and then into the tree. I had this metal awning on one window and one night, it was already dark, there was this horrible racket. Scared me to death. I called my landlord who lived across the driveway and told him someone was trying to break in my window. Well, there was no one breaking in…in was just a peeping tom!
That’s the closest I ever came to a wild turkey. And these were so unwild that they came and gathered them all back up again. Hopefully they took them somewhere even more rural.
Lol, did you have that story prepared or were you just ‘winging’ it? *grin*
Hi Anita, that’s hilarious! Turkeys that’d do that would have been the domesticated variety…who seem to have had all the brains bred out of ‘em. Tell me, do noises at the window like that get feather and feather away after the culprit is spotted? Actually, I can imagine a turkey deciding it can “take” a car, lol. In a letter to his daughter, Ben Franklin admired the turkey for its bravery, for, in his words, ” He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.” *
I’m guessing the context of having won a war against a great nation helps understand that. *grin* Ben may have glossed over the fact that it probably would attack the farmer, the cow, a horse or a rhino coming into its territory, lol. At some point bravery must be carefully re-examined for signs of impending foolhardiness, methinks.
Great pun story, I had to share that with around, where it was greeted with much anguish and delighted groaning.
Thanks for coming to read the post and share your ‘pinion of a fowl intruder!
Cheers!
pete
Lol, only prepared in that I’ve told my peeping tom story many times over the years
These were supposedly wild turkeys, hatched in an incubator I assume and when mature they released them. Ben Franklin sure nailed it, they are silly and either incredibly dumb or brave. In the case of these I vote dumb. Still, you have to admire that Don Quixote attitude! I’m glad they took them back, they were just sitting turkeys for all the rednecks that lived around there :p
Lol, fowl intruder, I must remember that one
HI Anita,
I’m reading your next comment and…AAaagh..oh drat, too late.. I now have the mental image of a classically painted scene…one of Sandra Boynton’s greeting card turkeys in a partial suit of dilapidated armor, with a beard, a barber’s basin on its head and a lance, aside a reasonably decrepit horse charging a windmill. Wish I could paint *that* well, it’d be a fun parody.
Our own feathered Don Tom has “left the building”. I hope it has found some other turkeys with whom to hang out, gquowping to their hearts content.
Cheers!
pete
Hi Pete,
I enjoyed your Gquowp-gquowp-gquowp pictures. ♥
Say, you sound familiar……lol. Hi Adele, thanks! As soon as I figure out what exactly the turkey meant by that I’ll know how to take your comment. *Big kidding grin* Thanks for letting me know you enjoyed the big Ole Bird. I know it seems a little silly but it was quite a change from the normal routine to have this visitor in the yard and on the roof. It hasn’t been seen for a couple of days and the scrub jays just aren’t the “E-ticket” attraction they once were.
Thanks again for stopping to read and remark:)
Cheers!
pete