Turkeys generally get the spotlight for one day out of the year, and it’s not for the most desirable outcome, at least if you’re a turkey.
But Colorado residents are reporting more turkeys in their towns than ever before along the Front Range, and it’s getting them some mad publicity even though Thanksgiving is months away.
When the Greeley Police Department posted about turkeys on Facebook, it got more responses than, well, anything, except perhaps when police found a car in a lake at one of the city’s most popular parks. was shared nearly 800 times and about half that number of people commented, many offering stories about their own encounters with the big birds.
EMTs said the turkeys liked to chase them from their ambulances and not allow them back inside the garage. Kody Wilson, a popular Greeley freelance weatherman, said he had a standoff with the turkeys in his car and lost (he didn’t offer details and was too busy to talk, but he did live to post about it). Others said the turkeys chased them, but then others said the resident Canada geese not only had greater numbers, they seemed far sassier.
Occasionally some Greeley residents have called the police or Colorado Parks and Wildlife to report the turkeys, but mostly that’s out of concern for the birds, not their property, their pets or themselves. One Greeley turkey is missing a foot, which prompted dozens of concerned callers (the bird, just like humans, could still get around pretty well).
“One called and said she tried to put it in her car to rescue it,” Greeley police spokesperson Kristen Duus said, suppressing a laugh.
A pair of wild turkeys appears to follow an animal control vehicle out of a parking lot in front of Music Depot in Greeley. (Music Depot video)Sheridan Samaro, a Denver Audubon board member and wildlife biologist, had heard about turkeys near her home in Boulder County on eBird, a website where bird watchers report cool sightings, and now she’s spotting more herself in some watersheds about a mile from her house and in popular areas such as Waneka Lake Park in Lafayette.
“I hadn’t seen them around here at all until a couple years ago,” Samaro said, “and now they’re not an unusual sighting.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife estimates that around 35,000 turkeys live in Colorado. That’s a big number considering that in the 1980s, CPW had to introduce thousands of turkeys across the state to grow their numbers. There are now two subspecies of turkeys in Colorado. Colorado has the native Merriam’s turkey, generally found in the foothills and mountains west of Interstate 25, and the Rio Grande, which was introduced to the Eastern Plains in the 1980s.
Those in the urban areas are likely seeing Rio Grandes, as they’re generally spotted along cottonwood riparian areas common among the Front Range. But you might spot a Merriam’s in places that creep into the foothills, such as some cities in the Denver area (Lakewood or Littleton are good examples), Fort Collins or Loveland.
They are doing well, Samaro said, so it makes sense that we would eventually start seeing more of them. But their guest star appearances in urban areas also show the turkeys’ ability to adapt to humans in the same way that coyotes, geese and even bald eagles have managed in the past few decades.
“They are able to thrive in urban landscapes now,” Samaro said, “and we do a pretty darn good job with open spaces preservation. So they are able to hang on in the margins.”
People would occasionally see wild turkeys at the northwestern edges of Greeley near the Poudre River and the adjacent concrete trail. But like Samaro, residents are spotting them more and more often in parks and shopping centers.
Reasons for the increased turkey sightings are many, including habitat loss or encroachment from development to their numbers increasing, in addition to the main reason: We’re stuffing them with free food.
“Once they realize we are an easy food source,” said Brandon Muller, an assistant area wildlife manager in CPW’s northeastern Colorado region, “they are constantly looking for that.”
Serendipitous snacks
Sometimes that food source humans provide to turkeys is inadvertent. We have bird feeders, for instance, and those aren’t just used by fashionably feathered songbirds out for a snack. Squirrels take advantage of them, and so of course turkeys won’t turn down some easy meals either.
There’s also food waste, such as the kind tossed by restaurants out back, random picnics and chow left out for the neighborhood stray cats.
But if there are turkeys in an urban area, and they’re overstaying their welcome, someone is probably feeding them.
“If they accumulate, it’s almost always where birds are being fed one way or another,” said Ed Gorman, CPW’s small game manager.
In 2022, a turkey got its own Instagram posts for making the Westlake Shopping Center, one of Greeley’s busiest retail areas, its home base.
A post shared by #GreeleyLocal (@greeleylocal)
The bird showed up a couple weeks before hunting season, and Westlake is not only next to Sanborn Park, a popular spot with a nice pond, but there are several places to eat. And that was the problem.
Residents not only fed the bird their scraps from sandwiches and pizza, businesses left out food for him. Eventually, the bird became a nuisance, which is generally what happens. It began scratching up cars after it saw its reflection in the doors and thought it was another turkey. Sometimes it sat on them.
Feeding wild animals is not only illegal, it’s not good for wild animals, and it rarely ends well. That’s what happened here: The turkey was eventually hit by a car and taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center.
“It was getting fed all kinds of random things, and that made it habituated,” Mueller said, “and once a wild animal becomes habituated, there’s no way to make them not that way.”
Turkeys are known to be a smart bird by those who hunt them, with keen eyesight and good instincts. So it’s possible they would find their way into cities anyway. In a city, the predators are few and no hunting is allowed.
“City life,” Mueller said, “is a little less stressful.”
But it’s unlikely they would hang around busy urban areas with some munchies.
“People like watching turkeys,” said David Nikonow, a district biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation who has Colorado as a part of his territory, “and so they put out feed for them.”
A mild ruckus
Turkeys roaming the neighborhood parks and occasionally people’s backyards haven’t caused enough of a ruckus to get CPW involved. Law enforcement such as animal control units won’t do anything about them, save for writing Facebook posts, because turkeys fall under CPW’s jurisdiction.
They’re capable of hurting you, as they are big birds, Mueller said, but no one’s reported any major injuries (or, really, any pecking at all). They will also generally leave pets alone.
“They’re not a serious concern to hurt someone,” Mueller said.
It is true that turkeys will chase you, although this is more likely in the spring, from late March to early May, during the breeding season. Geese are more likely to chase you no matter what time of year.
Turkeys are wild animals and should be left alone, Mueller said, something he’s said about any wild animal in his region probably 100,000 times. Wild animals, and this goes for turkeys, too, also don’t need to be rescued, even if they have just one foot. The Facebook commentators, besides nicknaming the turkey “Nubet” (like chicken nugget, but nub, because its leg ends in a nub) or Captain Red Beard, reported that particular turkey was doing just fine.
Those who bother the turkeys or feed them are frustrating to National Wild Turkey Federation biologists, whose mission is to protect, improve and increase habitat for wild turkeys to keep their populations high for recreational purposes such as hunting.
Urban areas generally aren’t considered good habitat for turkeys or their health, but the turkeys may disagree for the same reasons that we like going to Taco Bell or McDonald’s, even though we know it’s not necessarily healthy.
Ten wild turkeys cross the street in a west Longmont neighborhood on March 16, not far from the St. Vrain River and a chain of green spaces that provide more natural habitat for the birds. (Doug Conarroe, Special to The Colorado Sun)“So the population may be good,” Nikonow said, “but it does make it frustrating as a hunter because when they know they are safe, they’re not going to want to leave. We are excited to have a robust turkey population, but we want them to remain wild.”
That’s the idea behind the NWTF’s Rocky Mountain Restoration Initiative, an effort to improve and in some cases restore three landscapes in Colorado in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service. They are planning projects in southwestern Colorado, where the NWTF hopes to restore more than 300,000 acres; in the Upper Arkansas River area, where they hope to improve up to 45,000 acres; and the Upper South Platte, where they are working to restore 150,000 acres. These areas are public and private land, and all three support turkey populations.
Improving habitat where turkeys can thrive may help ease the pressure to seek out urban landscapes as well as curb their appeal, Nikonow said, and therefore increase hunting and wildlife watching opportunities, as well as improve the overall health of the population. But as long as people feed them, this is like putting a garden or a cheeseburger in front of hungry people and asking them which one they’d prefer.
Still, Samaro, the wildlife biologist, does see some good in the turkeys exploring urban landscapes. As demonstrated by the Greeley police Facebook post, people do care about the turkeys, and not just because of Thanksgiving.
“Maybe that sparks an interest,” Samaro said. “It’s a bird every kid learns to draw. It’s a good way to get people interested in birds.”
It’s fun, in other words, for a chance to see a big bird in the wild, Samaro said.
“It’s just like anything else, if people give them space, it can be a good thing,” she said. “I think it’s cool.”
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Once-scarce wild turkeys show up en masse in northern Colorado — and their neighbors have stories )
Also on site :