Wild Turkeys, Adams County
Tom Wilberding
Hello birders,
No rarities to report, just a rather unusual Wild Turkey sighting.
Barb and I took advantage of the warm, sunny weather today and rode our bikes
from the Bluff Lake Nature Center northwest along Sand Creek on the Sand Creek
bike path to the confluence of Sand Creek and the South. Platte River. An
industrial corridor. Barb: “When’s it going to get pretty?”
The most birds we saw was at the Denver sewage plant, the effluence at the
confluence, the sudsy, sulfurous cascades below the plant. Here there were
hundreds of American Wigeon and Northern Shovelers frantically gobbling up
whatever was flowing from Denver’s Cloaca Maxima.
We biked south on the South Platte River bike path to the spooky necropolis of
Riverside Cemetery, home of Augusta Tabor since 1895 and Governor John Evans
since 1897. We stopped for a break before heading back. Barb heard some rustling
in the leaves below us on the bank. “Turkeys!”
There were four adults crouching on the bank next to a King Sooper grocery cart
and broken concrete. A passing local bicyclists said he photographed them here
in the spring when they were poults and later watched them become jakes and
jennies, now Toms and hens. Location here: https://goo.gl/maps/4hxSZ1zcVVuDJQ3r8
It was a strange Thanksgiving tableau, far from Currier & Ives. These
turkeys were at home with the sounds, sights, and smells of the Denver sewage
plant, the Cherokee coal plant, rumbling coal trains, roaring semis, a homeless
encampment, an oil refinery, and a concrete crushing mill.
Nature persists, even in difficult conditions, and so may we all this Thanksgiving
and in the coming months 'til spring, when the pandemic may finally end.
Best,
Tom Wilberding
Littleton, CO
modise
Lesley Brown
Amy Roberts
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Cinnamon Bergeron
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