Turkey day on Peaks Island
Thanksgiving is here and the turkeys have arrived. Literally. The other day on a morning run I spotted a rafter of wild turkeys milling about by Davies Cove. You see them all over the island actually. It’s funny to think that these gals have been calling Peaks home for years, stuck out on the island. While wild turkeys can apparently fly short distances, it’s tough to imagine a pack of them taking flight from Portland, the Diamonds or any of the other small bird colonies in the Casco Bay. Which begs the question, how’d did they get here.
I did some sleuthing online and through our island encyclopedia (read: Nextdoor) without any definitive answers but some solid leads. Dr. Chuck Radis suggests on his blog that they perhaps arrived as eggs purchased through a catalog. One resident posits they might have seen the original pair several years ago, the so-called “Adam and Eve” of the bunch – and even snapped a photo. However they ended up on-island, the ocean breezes and tranquility on Peaks clearly set the right mood. Come forth and multiply, and so they did. There are dozens of them these days.
My research took an interesting twist when I learned about some unexpected fowl (pun intended) details. Another islander – a lovely fellow who delivers our newspaper sun, sleet, rain or Atlantic gale – offered insight into a bird of another sort: the Peaks Island pheasant. Apparently a mating pair of pheasants was brought to the island in the late 1970s, where they, like the wild turkeys, produced prodigiously. However, the island pheasants didn’t last long. Our source – who also served as a bartender at one of our local watering holes – tells us over the years the pheasant population thinned, perhaps due to furtive island bird hunters. He notes: “It seems the pheasants had indeed met a bad end...a dinner table!”
For now the turkeys have not met the same fate. They run wild around the island, especially the hens who can be seen in bunches along the Backshore and up into Tollman Heights. They rule the roost – and I suspect, these ladies are safe for now. Happy Thanksgiving, all.