Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't think I've ever seen this many turkeys together. Right alongside the trail on afternoon at Circle B Bar Preserve, there they were. I couldn't even get them all into one shot. There are more of them to the left of this frame.

This was as close as I could get to them, and that was with a 400mm lens. I tried to give them a wide berth and get in front of them, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me.

Before I could get around them, they took off running, and just a second or two after I took this shot, they were airborne and gone.

Who's A Turkey?

I was walking down the main road in Myakka River State Park on Saturday (Saturday was a very full day!) and I saw a truck stopped up ahead. They were looking intently at something back in the woods. So I pointed my long lens back that way and sure enough, there was a big male turkey in there. It was mighty dark in there, but I still managed to get a couple of decent shots, all from the same angle, though. I tried to move and get some different shots, but the lighting didn't cooperate and the turkey moved off into the brush. After watching him for a few seconds, he started gobbling just like I've always been told they do, but never heard. It was pretty cool. This is the only time I've ever seen a male turkey anywhere other than a dinner plate. I have shot some females in the past, albeit from a pretty great distance.

Still More Turkeys

I almost forgot about these pictures. I was on my way home from Daytona Beach the other day when I saw these turkeys out foraging for food on the side of the road. I pulled off, put the big lens on the camera and hopped out to get some shots. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me get very close. It occurred to me that they were pretty oblivious to the cars speeding by, but me on foot must have been a threat to them. Maybe I should have tried to stay in the car and shoot. I'll remember that next time.


It didn't take long before they got tired of me and flew off. I was surprised how well they flew. They didn't just use their wings to hop up onto a roost like a chicken might, but they actually flew away. This picture is a little blurry (like most of the shots I got from too far away), but it's still a turkey on the wing, and one of the few turkey shots I've ever gotten.

Another Turkey

I spotted another turkey in the wild a few weeks ago! She was just out minding her own business, walking along a fence row. I was on a train that was moving along at a pretty good clip, so I wasn't able to get much in the way of pictures. But you can at least see it's a wild turkey. Someday, I'll get something more impressive, just you wait and see!

One of the first birds I ever photographed in the wild was a turkey. He was really far away and I didn't have much of a camera, but I still got a picture. So I'm always on the lookout for these guys, I just hardly ever see them.

Unprocessed Thanksgiving Dinner

For only the second time ever, I saw a wild turkey on Sunday. The first time was quite a few years ago when I was first starting to get interested in digital photography. A buddy and I took my new 1 megapixel camera out on a small road trip, and one of our stops was a dirt road that ran up into the Green Swamp a short ways. Off on the side of the dirt road, I spotted a turkey and got a single shot that's only slightly worse than this one. But I knew that great things were coming if I only practiced with that camera. And that brings us to yesterday and my second turkey. This gobbler was on a trail at Oscar Scherer park. I spotted him as soon as I came around a corner. I thought at first it was a single sand hill crane, but I watched him for a second and figured out what it really was. I slowly started trying to get closer for a better shot, but a couple of other hikers walked past me and straight towards the bird, causing him to run off into the bushes. I would have liked to gotten a better picture, but there's always next time. Even if it takes 6 more years...