Nesting Perseverance by a Female Gould’s Wild Turkey Under Multiple Direct Predation Threats

In Arizona, we observed a Gould’s hen that was incubating a nest deal with numerous predation threats, where potential predators came within feet of her nests while she was present.  Black bears, gray foxes, and coatis all walked by or approached the hen while she was incubating, but she stood her ground.  The take-home is that nest predation may be more nuanced than we originally believed, as a predator approaching a nest with a hen present doesn’t always result in the nest being lost.