On this sunny, relatively cool morning, I drove through the lower Bonne Femme Valley, south of Columbia. Wildlife sightings were initially unremarkable, including a young buck, a red-tailed hawk, two great blue herons and a host of common songbirds.
Then I rounded a corner and encountered a parade of nine wild turkeys, foraging for seeds, waste grain and insects in a field. Closer to my pickup, a female and her four poults dashed along the graveled road and escaped into tall grass.
Though wild turkeys are certainly not rare, the sudden appearance of this flock on an otherwise uneventful morning was a special treat. As all naturalists know, such surprise encounters are what encourage our regular visits to nearby forests, fields and wetlands.
