Wild turkey population booming in Cape Cod this Thanksgiving after 130-year absence

CAPE COD, Mass. — A bevy of Butterballs will soon grace Thanksgiving tables on Cape Cod, but just outside the dining room windows, a rougher, tougher gang of gobblers lurks.

Wild turkeys are everywhere on Cape Cod, roaming parks and backyards, holding up traffic as they slowly parade across roads, seemingly unafraid of humans, eyeballing us with bobbing heads and a "what are you looking at?" stare.

This fowl ubiquity is a relatively new development on the Cape. Sure, wild turkeys were all over Massachusetts during the era of colonial settlement, but as their habitat disappeared, so did the birds. According to the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, the last known native turkey was killed in the state in 1851.

Thus, a gobble-free era came to pass on Cape Cod. And it lasted more than 130 years.

Meanwhile, state biologists started trapping wild turkeys in New York and releasing them in Massachusetts. Eventually, it was Cape Cod's turn at the trough.

According to a 2006 Cape Cod National Seashore draft environmental impact statement, "Eighteen birds were released at Camp Edwards in 1989, and 28 birds were released in 1995-1996 in the vicinity of (Cape Cod National Seashore) in Wellfleet."

Call them the gobbling washashores. And they got busy, doing those things that turkeys do. Nibbling nuts, berries and insects. Roosting, roaming and establishing their status in turkey society. Yup, it's called a "pecking order." And, most importantly, pumping out the poults, those surprisingly cute baby turkeys, to keep the whole turkey circus going.

So it's fair to assume that almost all the wild turkeys on Cape Cod descend from these feathered pioneers of a few decades ago. At the beginning of this reintroduction phase, it was pretty rare to see a wild turkey on the Cape.

Mark Faherty, science coordinator at Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, did bird surveys in the Cape Cod National Seashore from 2001 to 2003. "Wild turkeys were uncommon," he recalled in a phone interview. "Every once in a while, I would hear a gobble in the distance."

But the turkey tide turned.

"Now, they knock on the window at my office and jog back and forth," Faherty said. While it may be tricky to figure out how many wild turkeys currently live on Cape Cod, the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife estimates the state population at somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000 birds.

Trying to understand wild turkeys has vexed Faherty, a trained ornithologist. "I cannot make heads or tails of their social organization or their comings and goings," he said. "I don't understand the changing flock sizes and it bugs me."

Some days, Faherty will see three turkeys in a spot. The next day, 16. Then, six. This perplexes the noted bird expert, who is bound by science to interpret and explain the natural world in an orderly way. "They've exposed me as a charlatan," he joked.

Occasionally, wild turkeys can become aggressive to humans.

We saw this in Osterville in 2011, when a turkey repeatedly attacked a mail truck and was relocated by wildlife officials.

The Division of Fisheries and Wildlife urges folks to stand their ground against aggressive turkeys, advising this on their website: "Don’t hesitate to scare or threaten a bold, aggressive turkey with loud noises, swatting with a broom or water sprayed from a hose."

Hopefully, it won't come to that, and the new turkey era on Cape Cod can proceed peaceably.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Wild turkeys flourishing on Cape Cod after 130-year absence