It's milkweed season, babyyyy

The turkeys in front of Dunkin Donuts, flower of the week and more

Mailbag: What’s with all the turkeys

Ryan asks: why are there so many turkeys in Brighton, MA?

They’re everywhere, folks! Here are a couple in our parking lot a couple of years ago.

When you start looking into this question, as I’m guessing many have done after fowl encounters, you get a lot of answers, each slightly different. That’s because it’s a case where local factors are important and have led to diverging population trends (which doesn’t fit well into the pop-science narrative of one quirky cause and one amusing effect.)

One general trend, though, is that rural turkey populations are in decline. Wild turkeys need a mix of young forest for adult foraging, heavy grass cover for their nests and young (one nest can include 20 eggs, so this is a crucial stage) and ideally large trees to roost in at night. This mix of habitats is becoming harder to find in, say, north-central Kansas, where in spring 2018, many hunters failed to harvest any birds. This connects to the broader decline in grassland-nesting birds, and buddy, do not get me started on that. Suffice to say that rural turkeys face a wide variety of challenges, and as a result the overall North American turkey trend is downward.

But at the same time, urban and suburban populations of wild turkeys have surged in some places, especially the Northeast. It’s not really a matter of rural turkeys moving to the ’burbs. That may have been the case with the founder populations (in Massachusetts, game management agencies first reintroduced birds to unsuitable brushy forests, and then they just moved to cities). But at this point it’s probably better to think of them as mostly separate breeding populations. In metro areas, turkeys can find abundant food, weedy fields and young forest patches, few predators and basically no human hunting. Similar to deer, the release from predation and access to food and cover to raise young have led to population booms.

The best single article I’ve read on this is by Yoni Applebaum in The Atlantic, which starts just south of my neck of the woods in what’s now Plymouth, MA, with the Pilgrims marveling at the abundance of deer and turkey. Applebaum points out, though, that the abundance of those game species was a result of intentional management by Native Americans (as well as, potentially, a temporary halt to hunting after many Native Americans died from European-borne diseases.) Indigenous people in the Northeast burned underbrush to improve forest habitat for turkeys, creating more food sources like nuts and new shoots for gamebirds.

And now, patchy urban habitats are providing what wild turkeys need, even though many of us conceptualize these places very differently. Turkey abundance back then and their urban resurgence now is not a result of “wilderness” but human choices about land management—and, of course, turkey ingenuity.

“The line between wilderness and civilization has dissolved,” Applebaum concludes. “But then, it was always an illusion.”

“You can say that again!” cheer the dozens of possums that make up the staff of Possum Notes.

Flower of the week

It’s milkweed season! Hurray! In the eastern half of the U.S., if you go to a weedy untended spot, the species you’re most likely to see is common AKA prairie milkeed (Asclepias syriaca). I found it on a remnant dune on Quincy’s busiest beach. It’s the same species that you find in drier prairies out west, and the same one I saw about to bloom in southeastern Massachusetts’ largest grassland:

If you’re interested in hosting milkweeds to support monarch butterfly larvae, a good first step is getting a nursery’s recommendations on locally-adapted milkweed varieties or species. But the great thing about milkweed is that it could already be there in the seed bank of your soil—you just have to choose to let it grow, and you’re done! Instant wildflower garden! (Yes, they can spread pretty quickly; yes, your neighbors might complain at a certain point. Use discretion. Manage adaptively.)

Okay, one last thing…

I can’t not share these pictures of the first Piping Plover chick I got to see up close (all while minding my business on a folding chair near the lifeguard tower!)

They look like animate pebbles! That useless little wing! Incredible.

Adult on the left and chick top-right.

Someone who knows a thing or two about plovers tells me that this chick looks less than a week old!

Duxbury Beach has nesting Piping Plovers, listed as threatened nationally and endangered in some areas. The funny thing about threatened species is that they don’t run around with a little sign that says “threatened” hovering above them. Sometimes they’re just minding their business on a fairly popular beach south of Boston. (The beach was nearly empty that day due to iffy weather.)

We also have a pair nesting in Quincy that have now hatched chicks. Their nesting area, near the Clam Box restaurant, was roped off a few weeks ago. Fingers crossed for those tiny heroes. While we might furrow our brows and say, “what a mess these birds got themselves into, and I’m sure people (not me) will ruin this for them,” on the other hand many people now have gotten to see or at least are aware of a relatively rare bird that’s making a go at nesting in their neighborhood. I’m excited about that.

If you want to help out

I’m part of a group called Quincy Neighbors Mutual Aid. We’re doing neighbor-to-neighbor support for food and other essentials. The funds are running a bit low if you’re able to help us build it back up: FundRazr site here.

---

Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag land.