Doorstep and Friend Do It Again, Turkeys in the Straw, and What About Those Fawns?

This photo should be further down in the blog. We'll be back to it. In the meantime just keep going...


The grain is about a week from harvest--


And come 6:30pm, here come the turkeys.


And let me tell you, the turkeys are...well...having a field day. (Always wondered what that meant.) Gobble, gobble, gobble.

That is until they decided that I'd been staring at them a little too long. Turkey paranoia turns into a speedy turkey trot to the woods


Doorstep and Friend have done it again as they did two years ago. They have raised a clutch of three chicks. Ordinarily doves and pigeons only lay two eggs at a time, rarely three. But Doorstep and Friend have turned into very good parents and seem to raise three without any problem whatsoever.





Above is One. One had some seed and then nestled down over her feet for a rest. Look at her expression. She's looking a bit annoyed. Perhaps because she's all settled down and then I showed up. She doesn't particularly want to have to get up but if I come out the door she'll have to. Maybe it isn't so annoyed as a Mourning Dove attempt at a menacing look, ie. don't you dare come out!




One is in the foreground and that's Two up right. Two is very vigilant. He too spends time nestled down on his feet but he tries to be alert even when half asleep.

This is Three, the baby. (It was Three until Blogger ate the photo. And as I can't insert it back into place, I'll just put it up at the top and you can scroll back up.) Three is unhappy, very unhappy. In fact Three is downright disgruntled and even mournful. He doesn't want to be weaned. He does not want to eat on his own. And at this moment he doesn't want ANYTHING other than his parents to keep feeding him just like they always have. Today his father, Friend, had had enough. When Three came up, crowded his father, and did little baby bird wing flutters. Friend jumped at him, well towards him anyway and then chased him for a few feet. The other two fledglings were on the patio doing the, I'll peck four seeds up individually, and three will invariably fall out but sometimes the fourth one actually goes down.
(After several more bouts of being jumped at for begging yesterday, Three got hungry enough to try feeding himself today. He's up to the peck four seeds, drop two stage. He'll do just fine now that he's willing to try.)

Karen Anne Kolling of Rhode Island asked, "What's the fawn story?", in the comments section. Suddenly it occurred to me that because they were photographed through the fence, it might well look like they were in a pen.

Actually though that isn't the case. These are free wild fawns. And as young fawns are supposed to do, they are waiting, waiting for their mother to return from feeding to nurse them. The photographer, James Blank, happened to be on the road on the other side of the fence that surrounds the show grounds of the Rock River Thresheree when he saw them lying in the grass .
I thought it very smart of Mama Deer to put them in a spot where the fence kept them out of the road if they were flushed on one side and a wagon on the other to help obscure them from sight.

Looking at the sequence of the fawn photos, and the difference between the two fawns reactions, I was reminded of another pair of siblings who had similar personalities. Yes, Primus and Secundus. Primus was always--ready to show himself completely. There is no peering for this guy either.

Now look at the top fawn photos. There she is peering through the blades of grass and leaves of flowers. And who previously was peering all the time like this fawn? Secundus of course!

Speaking of whom, I looked yet again today for the Ms but as is usual of late, they'd gone off to another part of the territory. A part which I cannot observe. It does make sense though, the parents in order to keep an eye on the eyasses hunted that field very hard to feed P and S so they wouldn't have to go far afield and out of sight lines. Now as it is time to give the kids some lessons, it is smart to go to a spot where the prey base is high and likely an easier area for very young hawks to find hunting success.

Donegal Browne