This Was No Trot

January has been acting like January lately, which means it has been cold, so obviously I haven't bothered to go looking for bugs. We finally got enough snow to cover the grass, just barely, and it has stuck around for a few days because the temperature has been below freezing. Definitely not bug weather (although... I take it back. Over the weekend we had a day in the 40s, and I did see a couple of bugs that day when I was walking around in the backyard, but I didn't have my camera. Anyway, it was just a winter cranefly, a fly, and some springtails, so nothing I would have bothered to post here). One of the many fun things about snow, even snow that is just barely able to cover the grass, is that it lets you know when there has been wildlife walking around in the backyard. Today, for instance, I looked out an upstairs window and saw than an area of the lawn was covered in footprints.

As you see here:

 There were a lot of them.

 I knew what they were from when I first saw them out the window - turkey footprints. This is not the first time there have been turkeys in my backyard, but I haven't seen any in a few years, I don't think.

 Turkeys have big feet.

 I followed the footprints along one of the paths, where they just stopped right before the stile. I couldn't tell where they had gone, until I climbed the stile myself...

 ... and saw a big flock of turkeys in my neighbor's yard. Yes, I know I am breaking my own blog rules by posting this, because the rules say the pictures have to be of things in my backyard, but work with me here - if I had looked out the window a few minutes sooner I probably would have seen them in my backyard. In fact, if I had looked out a different window earlier I suspect I would have seen them marching up my driveway. Here you can see some on the grass, and the ones on the right are standing on a stone wall. I didn't get any good pictures because there was this tangle of bushes between me and the turkeys, and when I crossed the stile and started down the other side, hoping to get a better vantage point, they did something I did not expect...

 Now, as I have said, there have been turkeys in the backyard before. I have seen them a handful of times. I have also seen what they do when they have decided to get away from the human lurking nearby, watching them - they run off into the woods. But that's not what these turkeys did - they FLEW.

 I know that turkeys can fly. But I thought that they flew like chickens, kind of clumsy, and fluttery, and barely getting off the ground. It turns out they fly really well, and really fast, and they take off like rockets. Well, not straight up, propelled by an explosion, but lets just say they get airborne really efficiently. I was flabbergasted. And impressed.

 And hey, I learned something today!