Thanks for this interesting footage. We don't have wild turkeys in Ireland and we see turkeys only as Christmas dinner providers. So it was great to see the original wild bird out there in the wild defending its young. Her dark plumage, her calls, her defensive half flight etc speak of genuine survival in a wild environment. Our domestic birds show brief flashes of this behaviour but it's all for nothing. Thanks again.👍
What a fantastic video, thank you! So interesting to see how she "takes stock" of the location of the babies, and how her vocalization changes. Thank you for putting this up!
I know a man who was knocked unconscious by a Long-eared owl, defending her little ones. He saw the owl coming, put his arms crossed in front of his face, but got hit on the head. After several minutes, he awoke from his unconciousness. Next to him lay the owl, also unconcious. As he watched from a safe distance, she slowly recovered after 10 minutes, and returned to her nest
dollehengst I would never have thought a flying bird could knock a man unconscious -so that's very interesting to know than even a relatively small bird like an owl is capable of that - thanks for the info.
@@stevecook5156 one of my friends got a severe concussion and almost died in addition to being knocked out when he was cruising on the open ocean in his boat and a 2-3 lb flying fish nailed him in the side of the head. Split his skin open and he woke up with the boat still speeding in the same direction a couple minutes later.
Hello, at what distance were you to the mother turkey and her little ones? I'm amazed that she was so comfortable with you close by. Thanks for posting.
Just a few days ago I was standing in my driveway and two birds swerved to avoid me. They were squawking and really mixing it up, the hawk made a sharp turn and the turkey landed. It looked at me and then just ran off... and yes, the turkey and deer use the parcel next to me as a nursery. The turkey seemed to fly better than I thought it could.
Yes, turkeys can fly a lot better than you'd think. We used to have a lot of them here where I live in Nebraska, and their flying ability surprised me.
I'm kind of surprised that the turkey hen didn't double back and start dive-bombing the cameraman. I guess she had more of a sense of where the real danger was.
As a personal experience, I used to see a flock of them wandering through an industrial park where I work a couple of years ago. They only started putting distance between you and them if you climbed out of the car and started following them. Of course these didn't have brood chicks to look after in mid-winter...
It depends where you are. If you go to State Forests and etc, turkeys will fly off at the very first detection of humans...you can be 300 yards away and your only sighting will be their fleeing wings and speck bodies. Then there's the ones that hang around towns that will sit on cars and let you walk almost right up to them. They're only afraid when you act suspicious, just like mallards.
You know instead of thinking it's COOL, u would have been crowned a HERO had u gathered the mother & sweet tiny babies up & made them a safe place to grow up instead of being hunted by the hawk or any other bird of I prey (& I love hawks). YES, "LET NATURE TAKE ITS COURSE" people say; but you are so blessed to experience nature.... do you even realize that.... think about how many in the world who don't even know what any of these birds look like in real life...... so I think they should be PROTECTED & SAVED every chance we get as humans...turkeys don't come around everyday....capturing what happened, is RARE. Imagine how good you would feel saving them. And then having the turkeys trust you with more families in the future. I know it's been 11yrs since u did this video; but I hope you'll try to teach your son or daughter how precious nature is & how LUCKY u are to live where u can make a difference & make the future for your little ones & your future grandchildren & so on, even more special & safe.
Very cool. You were lucky to have caught that on camera. I don't think you caused it to happen and I am really surprised the hawk saw you and decided to come on in for a bite of lunch anyways.
Feels like I'm walking in my backyard - see this often, especially the hawks. Have a HUGE gathering of these turkeys that show up from time to time too - haven't seen them with babies yet though... Per the comments below, I've yet to see the hawks hunt together, I see them every day and always alone. Along with 1/2 a dozen other raptors.
You must be a very insignificant person- neither this wild turkey with young or this attacking red-tailed hawk pay the least bit of attention to your being right there! 😂
where did you see that? spent a lot of time hunting and watching turkeys and have never seen them kill or even injure a hawk or owl they just want to get away from them
While looking out at a large meadow, the grass suddenly became alive. It took a few seconds before I realized it was covered with turkeys and their poult.
Admittedly the motherly instinct is very strong as seen in this video,where this turkey goes all the way to protect her chicks.I have seen another video where a turkey was fleeing for it's life, from a hawk stalking her all over a place.
Someone should breed condors to be even bigger. Would be funny to see human moms deal with that. They think it’s hard having one baby... what if they popped out 15 and had to worry about birds and shit.
