Wild Turkey

Turkey Closeup 2
Originally uploaded by paynehollow

"I froze and saw a few turkeys heading away, up a hill. More foraged farther up, and others to the right were threading their way through shrubs and boulders. Spread out across the hillside, the flock moved slowly to the left, noisily raking their feet through the leaves...

My approach drove half the flock over the crest of the hill; the rest went over a stone wall to the left. Suddenly, I was alone on the hillside, and all was quiet. An eerie peacefulness pervaded the scene—had they really been here, these feathered dinosaurs?

The proof was all around: dozens of bare circles of earth rimmed with leaves, a swath covering the full breadth of the hillside, bordered by a stone wall to the west, a road to the east. It was, I thought, an avian Stonehenge, and I had seen its creators at work."

~Robert Winkler