7:17 a.m. 14 degrees (20 degrees warmer than sunrise yesterday), wind NNW 1 mph. Sky: dull and overcast, not a hint of color. Permanent streams: upper, a mountain range of snow, conical peaks and conical valleys, on the rocks below the wooden footbridge's slats; lower, shape-changing air pockets under ice windows, a louder gurgle than yesterday. An oval skating rink near the marsh. Wetlands: apparently, suspended animation (at least above the snow), in tunnels below, voles and squirrels gather food in private (and in the dark), and weasels, quick as sparks, hunt the gatherers. One chickadee in the alders. Pond: smooth white surface, the only tracks are my own and the dogs.
In 1621, the Pilgrims brought domestic turkeys to North America, descendants of a Mexican subspecies domesticated by Aztec more than two thousand years ago and brought to Europe by the conquistadors in the fifteen hundreds. (Anasazi, of the desert Southwest, descendants of Aztec, domesticated a second subspecies, circa 700 BP.) Seventeen turkeys in my yard know nothing of their history. Or do they care? Too busy scratching up the snow, searching for acorns and sunflower seeds. Turkey tracks loop around the house. Birds wander out of the pines, into oak groves, under the feeders. Scratching. Always scratching.
See me and bolt. An explosion. Buxom birds on short, rounded wings . . . like jumbo bumblebees. Sail into the pines and maples. Perch in the open. Feathered knobs on stout limbs. Turkeys return in less than fifteen minutes, a reenactment of a conservation success story. Gone for a hundred years and back, literally everywhere, even the suburbs of Long Island.
Who is the most common bird in North America? Not the turkey. Answer: robin, at approximately 300 million. Non-native: hands down the chicken. Two billion, at any one time, 500 million for eggs; a billion-and-a-half for ovens or grills.
Joining the turkeys under the feeder, a tree sparrow. Classy looking. Bi-colored bill. Rufous eyeline and cap. Whitish breast and belly with a dark central spot. Mottled brown and rusty elsewhere. A honeymoon bird. Forty years ago, tree sparrows entertained newlyweds along the edge of Hudson Bay. Morning after morning, we stood slack-jawed in the presence of white bears and dainty sparrows. A memory, as much as a bird, flares up in the morning . . . keeps me going in a time of crisis.
Those Hudson Bay memories--what wonderful flares to bring the light on the eve of the Solstice. And thanks for teaching me about "BP" as a dating system. I'd moved to CE and BCE years ago, but never heard of BP.
https://www.thoughtco.com/bp-how-do-archaeologists-count-backward-170250
Carl Sagan's COSMIC CALENDAR from "The Dragons of Eden" puts all our time measurements into perspective, since humans don't even appear until 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 31.
http://visav.phys.uvic.ca/~babul/AstroCourses/P303/BB-slide.htm
So much wonder out there that we humans have to find a way to wrap our heads around it!
But the wild turkey is native to No. America. It’s a different bird than the domestic turkey.