Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Watching turkeys with Deb

A new friend, Deb, and I were on our way to my favorite sub place (pardon me, "hoagie place" is apparently what they call it up here) and we saw a big flock of turkeys. I had my cell phone with me, so I got Deb to stop and--here's where I got dumb--I got out of the car to photograph the turkeys.

Of course this spooked the birds, who began to move toward cover. I should've had Deb photograph them from her driver's side window, which would've given us great shots. Instead, I got these terrible shots of some scrambling turkeys, fleeing from certain death at my hands:

See them back there? Those specks?

Here you go--this one's MUCH better:
See that frightened guy, flapping his wings and running for his wild turkey life, just to the right of center?

Yeah, that's my fault. For all I know, he ran back there and had a little turkey heart attack.

All my reading about birds, birding, "stalking" them slowly, trying not to frighten them--it was completely lost on me at that moment. I got out of the car, walked around to the back, and then tried to get some photos as they (surprise!) ran away. Oy vey.

Perhaps it was because I was really hungry for that cheese sub (I mean hoagie). Perhaps I was just too excited at the thought of seeing turkeys in the wild. Perhaps I'm just a beginning birder with very little experience.

Perhaps it was all of that combined.

But the sub (I mean hoagie) was really good.

2 comments:

Rondeau Ric said...

We all do it. Turkeys spook super easy, they are as bad as reheaded woodpeckers.
Anyone who tries to take bird pics has a bunch of these.

Did you really expect anything different this closde to your
Thanksgiving? gobble?

No kidding, my word verification is
gwtrky, lol

LauraHinNJ said...

Funny story - we all chase the birds away trying to get closer for pics - maybe you were just too hungry!