This part of Maywood is photo-enforced! Thanks to Tim McQuaid for these photos.

There’s more gobbling going on at Maywood than just me eating up the Easter candy. It’s turkey hunting season. For the first time, Maywood Man is taking on the turkey.

We’ve lived here for…gulp…twenty years and the first turkey John saw was last year. I was dumbfounded when I saw a couple of wild turkeys a few years ago, and my father-in-law was the next to see one. But they have been scarce.

Well, they are shy and have excellent vision, so they are likely to see us first and avoid us. Usually our turkey sightings have been from inside the house. That’s where I was when I saw our dog chase after a turkey, who charged down our driveway like it was an airstrip and took off with great lumbering wingflaps over the trees. It was amazing, like watching an ostrich fly.

Maywood Man has been getting up in the wee pre-dawn hours to call in the turkey. His turkey caller (a disc scraped with a wooden stick) sounds not unlike nails on a blackboard…or certain family members when they get squawking. The annoying sound is supposedly a real come-on for the Toms. They come toward the screeching in search of a mate. Again, not unlike certain family members. He almost got one..a turkey, that is. The young male came walking right toward him. Fifteen feet away, Maywood Man aimed (sort of) and missed.

photo by Tim McQuaid’s field camera at Maywood

A few days later, a turkey sauntered across the top of the driveway while we were grilling dinner. Clearly taunting us. We were chatting with Tim, one of the hunters who had stopped by to change the batteries on his field camera. This was Tim’s first glimpse of a turkey at our place. That is, until he got home and viewed the pictures on the field camera. The corn he had set out for the deer turned into a gathering spot for a few gobblers.

A certain family member who shall remain unnamed wondered how a camera strapped to a tree could get such great photos.
“It’s a motion activated camera.”

“Yeah, but the birds are so well centered in the photos.”

“It’s a motion activated camera.  It takes a picture when something is in the viewfinder.”  It took awhile for that to sink in to her turkey brain.  Nevertheless, she has a point.  The camera on a tree took some pretty good pictures.

No bird to cook on the grill yet. In the meantime, I’m rather stuffed myself from MarySue Easter Eggs.

Turkey selfie. But the photo is courtesy of Tim McQuaid & his field camera.