The Boston Globe - (archive: https://archive.ph/zbdwM ) The wild turkey population has exploded in Mass. Here’s expert advice for living peacefully among them.

The rebirth of wild turkeys in Massachusetts has sparked numerous complaints about aggressive birds. But they are not out to get you: “Approach every interaction with a turkey as if you are the bigger turkey.”

By Stan Grossfeld Globe Staff
Updated November 18, 2024, 10:41 a.m.



November is a bad month for turkeys.

Some 46 million turkeys are carved up and eaten each Thanksgiving, the USDA estimates. In recent years, the wild turkey population explosion in Massachusetts has sparked numerous complaints about aggressive birds.

We’ve all heard stories of turkeys attacking their own reflections, cars, and pedestrians. This was their territory first. Like the native people, they were here before the Pilgrims. But eventually the turkeys were over-hunted, and they disappeared from Massachusetts by 1851.

Their rebirth would come more than a century later, with a little help from feathered friends across a state line.

In the early 1970s, 37 wild turkeys from New York state were released in Berkshire County. Today there are 30,000 to 35,000 in the Commonwealth, some coming to a bird feeder near you.
Don’t lock yourself in the storage closet with cans of cranberry sauce. These big birds are not out to get you. Their beaks are sharp but they have no teeth.

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