This Turkey Tuesday is about being vulnerable and is the final post about broods for this summer. Poults that are only days old (1st pic), are vulnerable at all times. They lack experience to avoid predators and rely on the hen to detect danger. This is why brood hens are constantly alert when they’re with young poults (2nd pic). But when young poults have to roost at night, the combination of the wild turkey’s relatively poor night vision and being on the ground create challenges – this is why hens often roost young broods in spots where vegetation allows them to get above ground (think downed logs) or in fairly open vegetation (think tall grass without overhead cover) where they could escape if threatened. Regardless, having a brood is dangerous for a hen, and sometimes the entire brood is lost during an attack by a predator. The 3rd pic by shows what such an event “looks like” with GPS telemetry data. The pink locations are locations a brood used during the first 2 days after hatching – an area of concentrated use ~6 acres along a right-of-way that bisected a pine forest – yet another example of how important openings are to broods. At the end of day 2, the hen moved the brood to the northeast to roost that night – at 2 am, accelerometer data from the GPS unit revealed that the hen and/or brood were attacked – note the 2 blue dots in the cluster of orange. The hen escaped and moved east, which is the cluster of blue dots, where she remained until 5 am when she returned to the area where the attack occurred. For hours, the hen moved back and forth through an area ~1/2 acre, presumably searching and trying to locate any surviving poults. Just after noon she left the area for good (yellow dots) and roosted in a tree that night – without poults. Ongoing research is showing that brood survival is < 50% in many populations, and even <25% in some. The take home is, being a brood hen is dangerous business despite the many adaptations wild turkeys have to avoid predators.
Pic of poult by Jarrod Stephens, brood by Robert Cook.
