Nature Notes: Thanks for Wild Turkeys
It’s turkey day, and many of us across America will be feasting on what Ben Franklin believed should have been our national bird. Bald eagles don’t taste good, but are more elegant and soar high in the sky; turkeys barely get off the ground when flushed. Vegans will forgo the turkey, but some will dine on the traditional trimmings, meatless stuffing, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce.
Colonists and their offspring have been feasting on turkeys ever since they arrived here in the beginning of the 17th century, having been introduced to them by the Native Americans who helped them get through the early years of the first settlements. Wild turkeys were somewhat plentiful on Long Island and elsewhere across most of the nation during those early years. However, by the beginning of the 19th century they were gone from here and much of eastern North America.
As in the case of the Indian wild fowl, America’s domestic chickens, surviving turkeys were easily raised in captivity, and farm-raised turkeys replaced wild ones on the Thanksgiving serving dish before the start of the 20th century. Almost all of us are still dining on the farm-raised ones, while the wild ones make a comeback.
Gardiner’s Island in the Peconic Estuary has had a flock of turkeys run loose since the mid-1950s, but their pedigree is questionable. Genuine New York wild turkeys made a comeback under the tutelage of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which brought back a small population found occupying mountainous regions of the southern part of the state and then distributed them here and there until they once again began to thrive.
As part of the state comeback program, in January of 1991 the D.E.C. live-trapped wild turkeys in the upper Hudson River area and let them go in Montauk’s Hither Woods. After a few years of adjusting, they got going big time and spread westerly, occupying the Napeague isthmus, then the rest of Amagansett and finally western East Hampton Town’s Wainscott and Northwest Woods. From time to time more wild-trapped upstate birds were released on the South Fork. The population further expanded and did so well that a regulated hunting season opened on them in 2011. This Thanksgiving several South Forkers will be feeding on turkeys that didn’t come from King Kullen, but were shot in the wild. Back to the future!
Turkeys have done so famously, why not bring back other wild birds and mammals that were part of the post-Columbus landscape here. Beavers, oters, wolves, bobcats, and maybe bears once did well here but were hunted and trapped into extinction on Long Island. The white-tailed deer population on Long Island was reduced to a few hundred or less by World War II; it now numbers in the upper thousands. Wolves were last found in Long Island in Native American settlements in the role of domestic dogs, but the local white politicians passed laws phasing them out here early on.
We once had several pairs of bald eagles nesting across the island, but they were steadily reduced down to just a single pair on Gardiner’s Island. After 1936 that pair departed; however, bald eagles are finally making a comeback, and from all accounts they have been welcomed by Long Island’s human population. At least three pairs have bred here in this decade, two successfully on Gardiner’s Island and Shelter Island’s Mashomack Preserve.
Minks and weasels have yet to be extirpated here, but may be shortly. Striped skunks and gray foxes were once almost as common as squirrels, then became very rare and were gone entirely from the South Fork east of the Shinnecock Canal by the mid-1980s. Skunks are making a comeback in this millennium; a few have been spotted recently in the Montauk area. A few gray foxes still occupy the Central Pine Barrens, and the pair seen east of Lake Montauk and at Culloden Point from time to time in the last decade may still be around.
Peregrine falcons and ravens are beginning to nest on Long Island again, while not a single ruffed grouse has been reported on the South Fork since the beginning of the 21st century. And where are the bobwhites?
While grouse have disappeared and bobwhites have almost disappeared, woodchucks and southern flying squirrels, which were never on the South Fork as far as we know, are now making serious inroads here. Did they get here on their own or were they released by nuisance trappers? That is the question.
So we see that the original Long Island wild fauna is making a comeback. We even had a real beaver and a beaver lodge a few years back, first in Scoy Pond in the Grace Estate, then at Fresh Pond in Hither Woods. A few river otters have been seen in Nassau and Suffolk Counties in recent years. Why not help both species reestablish in the manner that the wild turkey has been reestablished here? Coyotes (or coywolves) will make it here on their own and, perhaps, already have. Bobcats? Why not? Bears? Perhaps not.
Native raccoons, opossums, red foxes, gray squirrels, muskrats, chipmunks and cottontails don’t need our help. We don’t know if the New England cottontail is still in town. White-footed mice are cute and everywhere, but they serve as prime reservoirs for the Lyme disease spirochaete, and their feces can contain the deadly hanta virus. Nonnative Norway rats are overrunning us and have the potential to carry the plague organism. We don’t need any more of them.
To make the Long Island ark complete again, however, three long-gone species that will require special help from the DNA wizards in order to be resurrected are the heath hen, a species of prairie chicken, the passenger pigeon, and the Labrador duck. This Thanksgiving, before digging in, and while saying grace, add a line for the recoup of the native flora and fauna.
United States Census Bureau figures show that Long Island’s population has begun to shrink. Fewer humans and a few more wildlife comebacks, wouldn’t that be ducky?
Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].