Maine Nature News

Vol. 7, no. 5, Tuesday, January 29, 2002

Quick jumps:  | This week's report | Home page | From the Press |

Wednesday, January 23.  Orono (Map 23) On January 23, 20 Bohemian Waxwings and 12 Pine Grosbeaks ate crabapples in an Orono yard.  A pair of Carolina Wrens came to an Orono feeder on Jan. 28.  J.K.M.

Saturday, January 26.  Southwest Harbor (Map 16)  There is snow cover on Mount Desert Island.  But in many ways it looks like March.  The snow depth is less than a foot in most places.  Many streams are running; trails in the woods are ice-covered.  Long Pond is almost entirely open water, except in some coves, although Echo Lake, a smaller body of water, is completely frozen over.  (I don't know the ice depth.)  F.W.

Monday, January 28.  Orono (Map 23) A supercooled fog fell over town this morning.  This occurs when moisture precipitates out of very still air that is below freezing.  "Frost feathers" have formed on the North sides of almost every object exposed to the open air.  The frost formation has a beautiful fine structure, which I can only suggest with the closeup photo.  On some browsers (e.g. Netscape) you can right-click on the pictures and choose "View Image" to see an enlargement.  (On a Macintosh hold the mouse button for a second or two until a menu appears, then choose "Open This Image.")  F.W.

Sunday, January 27.  Orono (Map 23)  The snow depth around here is barely a foot and a half in places with least sun exposure.  It's been an unusual winter season. While I was out chopping ice and shoveling snow I heard a familiar sound, and it slowly dawned on me that it seemed out of context. It was the call of robins, browsing for food in nearby trees.  I soon remembered that I have been hearing them from time to time almost all winter.  F.W.

Monday, January 28.  Lincoln (Map 33 ) Living in Lincoln and buried in snow as we have been, I have to say I have not seen or heard a single Robin since mid-December.  That's not to say we might not hear one tomorrow, it's been pretty balmy! I'll let you know if we hear any! And I'll certainly enjoy hearing their song about now! J.H.

Monday, January 28.  East Millinocket (Map 43) In response to your question about vole tunnels in the snow, yes, I pointed one out to my wife when we were crosscountry skiing on Sunday.  D.W.

From the Press

Maine Sunday Telegram  Sunday, January 27, 2002, pages B1, B8

Taking wing

By MEREDITH GOAD, Portland Press Herald Writer
Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

KNOX — The folks at Aghaloma Farms have taken to calling the little road back by the heifer barn "Turkey Drive." For good reason.  Wild turkeys have made the dairy farm their winter home, regularly helping themselves to whatever they can find to eat when they're hungry and roosting in the nearby woods when they're not. First, there were about 20. Then there were 40, and they began showing up more often, especially when snows ran deep and food was scarce.  Suddenly this year, there were 140. The birds became more brazen, trotting across an old cornfield that was cut last fall and making a beeline for the bunker silo, where they stole good corn that was meant for the cows.

"You talk to any farm in this area," said Galen Larrabee, one of the owners of the farm, "and all except maybe one or two have got turkeys coming out their ears."  The reintroduction of wild turkeys into Maine, which began with 41 birds in the late 1970s, has been so successful they now number around 20,000 and have spread into parts of the state where biologists never thought they could make it. As their numbers have soared in Maine's open fields and broadleaf forests, thousands of hunters have flocked to get permits for the spring turkey hunt. It's not unusual to come upon a stalled line of cars with kids hanging out the windows, gobbling at a straggly line of birds taking their time crossing the road - a "turkey jam."

But wild turkeys also have become something of a nuisance to Maine farmers, who stand by frustrated and watch as the birds feast on their strawberries, blueberries, pumpkins, squash and corn.  This winter, lawmakers are considering legislation that would give the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife the same authority to manage turkey hunting seasons that it has for other wildlife species, opening the door to a fall hunt. The proposal also would give farmers the right to kill nuisance birds, and make it legal for motorists to keep turkeys that they accidentally hit and kill on the road.  No one has opposed the legislation, and last week the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife committee voted unanimously that it ought to pass.

The turkey explosion is particularly noticeable on central Maine dairy farms, where silage and undigested corn in manure piles provide an important food source in winter.
Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, a dairy farmer himself, called the reintroduction of wild turkey "a real success story.  "These birds have proven to be extremely thrifty," he said. "Most dairy farms are just overrun with them. I've got a couple hundred now that are regularly in the driveway." For dairy farmers, it's a matter of protecting not only their grain, but also the health of their animals, "because when turkeys eat, they also leave other things behind," explained Julie-Marie Bickford, executive director of the Maine Dairy Industry Association.

Yes, controlling freeloading turkeys is serious business. But hearing some of the turkey stories farmers have to tell, one can't help but be amused by the cleverness of the creatures that Benjamin Franklin once argued should be the national bird.  Like cats that come running whenever they hear the hum of a can opener, farmers say, turkeys start trotting whenever they hear the rumble of a tractor on its way to feed the cows. They want to eat.  Now.  

Larrabee, like a lot of other farmers, has started spreading lower-quality, leftover feed down by his manure pile to keep wild turkeys away from his good grain. But as he does so, he can't help but feel all those eyes watching him, waiting for him to finish the chore.   "I enjoy watching the turkeys," Larrabee said.  "It's just amazing the way they act and the way they move around.  But you know, it gets to be annoying.  It wasn't a problem at all when we had 40, but now we have 140 and you can see that they're so damned hungry that they're just waiting for you to get out of the way."

Another dairy farmer was counting the birds eating at his special turkey grain pile one day when he heard hollering from the other side of his house. It was his wife and two kids, chasing turkeys out of the garden.  Jon Olson, executive secretary of the Maine Farm Bureau, said southern Maine vegetable growers have complained of turkeys pecking away at their crops, especially pumpkins. Turkeys trying to catch field crickets poke holes in plastic-wrapped hay bales, exposing them to moisture and decay.

Gordon Scott, who grows blueberries on 100 acres in Waldoboro, hosts a flock of 35 to 40 turkeys that stroll through his crop, breaking off buds and ripe berries and "raising heck."  "We're not 100 percent sure just how much they're eating, but we know they're tramping down a lot," he said. "I've heard of some places where they haven't been able to rake a berry at all - the turkeys got them all."

Turkeys also have a taste for apples.  "One farmer said that the turkeys, because they operate in flocks and they're very smart animals, will get up in the tree and kind of shake the apple tree so all the apples fall down," Olson said. "It's quite entertaining to hear the stories, but it's troubling because of the damage."  "If you take a 15- or 20-pound bird and it lands in a tree, it's going to shake it quite a bit," said Ken Elowe, director of the Bureau of Resource Management at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. "Turkeys are not great at their landing when it comes at trees. They're not very graceful - they kind of cruise in at high speed and latch on." 

Maine has no more turkey problems than other states - it's just that people here haven't had to deal with them in a long time.  Wild turkeys are in the northern part of their range in Maine, but they thrived here during Colonial times. They were especially common in York and Cumberland counties and in smaller numbers east to Hancock County. They disappeared by the early 1800s, and attempts to reintroduce them did not take hold until the late 1970s.  Biologists didn't think turkeys would flourish too far north or east of central Maine farmlands, in places where winters are harsher and snows are deeper. But now they are showing up in towns east of the Penobscot River and north almost to Lincoln, Elowe said.

"When you get to the big woods, they still aren't there," he said. "There's not much habitat for them there."  The spring turkey hunt allows for only the taking of tom turkeys so that it won't affect the growing population. The season has gradually expanded over the years as turkeys have taken off and hunters have expressed more interest in trying their hand at bagging a bird.

In 1986, the year of Maine's first turkey hunting season, 536 hunters vied for just 500 permits and bagged only nine birds.  Last year about 15,000 hunters applied for 7,000 permits, and they bagged 2,517 turkeys.  This year, the number of permits is being upped again, to 9,000.  If a fall hunt is added, it probably would occur in October and initially have limits such as bows and arrows only, Elowe said. Such restrictions are necessary because hens can be taken in a fall hunt.  "The basic thing is we want to start it slow because we don't have a great population estimate, and we're trying not to biologically impact the number of turkeys," he said.  No matter what's decided about a new fall hunt, Elowe said, the state still plans to work toward an open hunt in spring so that anyone who wants to bag a turkey can have a shot at it.

The new legislation would give landowners who keep their property open to hunting an edge in getting a turkey permit. The special consideration is a way of saying thanks to the farmers whose silage and manure piles help the birds survive the winter and who see hunters flock to their land during the spring.  "The idea was to try to reward those special landowners," Elowe said. "And also these are the same places where we did a lot of our transfers initially to spread birds around because we knew the habitat was suitable."

Keith Harris, a vegetable farmer from Dayton, plans to take advantage of the new law. He has watched the wild turkey population in his biggest field grow from about 15 birds three or four years ago to well over 100 last summer. At his brother's dairy farm, about 5 miles down the road, sometimes there are 200 to 300 birds.  The turkeys can be a problem in the spring, when they pull up young seedlings, he said, but he also likes having them around.  "We enjoy seeing them," Harris said. "Personally, I'm an avid turkey hunter. They are very fun to watch and just listen to in the fall. You can hear them talking back and forth to each other."

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:
mgoad@pressherald.com