GETTY IMAGES .
Fowl Play
In this column from our archives , Ellen Liberman digs into the wild turkey ’ s comeback in Rhode Island .
Koren Caswell is a kind woman with a Snow White approach to the fauna of downtown Wakefield . The hummingbirds get sugar water , the squirrels freely raid the birdfeeders , bunnies are welcome . She puts out raisins for the crows . So , it was no surprise when the wild turkeys came calling . Small flocks have periodically made themselves at home in her yard , stopping by to graze the halo of seeds on the ground around the feeder , nestling comfortably in the shade of the house , leaping up to grab blueberries from the bushes in the back .
“ I like watching them . We don ’ t see birds that big around here ; they are interesting .” Of the across-the-street neighbor who grumbled about turkeys ripping up his lawn , she says , “ They are aerating the lawn , and digging up grubs and things you don ’ t want .”
Forty years after the state Department of Environmental Management ( DEM ) reintroduced wild turkeys to Rhode Island , the population has flourished and their range extended to the point of conversation — even strong opinion . On the one hand , says Josh Beuth , a principal wildlife biologist with DEM ’ s Division of Fish and Wildlife , “ wild turkeys are a conservation success story .” On the other : “ The nuisance calls are pretty much constant ,” he says . “ Especially in the spring , at the peak of the mating season .”
Before the advent of wildlife management , the fortunes of the eastern wild turkey , Meleagris gallopavo silvestris , had diminished with the size of their habitat and man ’ s taste for their meat . A New England native , the species were plentiful in the seventeenth century when the first colonists arrived . But their forest habitat was riven by agriculture , and then residential development . By the nineteenth century , Rhode Island hunters finished them off .
In the 1980s , state wildlife officials began to reintroduce wild turkeys . The first flock of twenty-nine birds imported from Connecticut established themselves in Exeter , but they were not enough to jumpstart a statewide revival . About a decade later , the DEM
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