I bicycle past that cemetery regularly, and I see those turkeys about half the time. It's such a treat to see them in the urban corridor!
Bryan Arnold Jefferson County On Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at 6:06:57 PM UTC-7 Tom Wilberding wrote: > Hello birders, > No rarities to report, just a rather unusual Wild Turkey sighting. > > Barb and I took advantage of the warm, sunny weather today and rode our > bikes from the Bluff Lake Nature Center northwest along Sand Creek on the > Sand Creek bike path to the confluence of Sand Creek and the South. Platte > River. An industrial corridor. Barb: “When’s it going to get pretty?” > > The most birds we saw was at the Denver sewage plant, the effluence at the > confluence, the sudsy, sulfurous cascades below the plant. Here there were > hundreds of American Wigeon and Northern Shovelers frantically gobbling up > whatever was flowing from Denver’s Cloaca Maxima. > > We biked south on the South Platte River bike path to the spooky > necropolis of Riverside Cemetery, home of Augusta Tabor since 1895 and > Governor John Evans since 1897. We stopped for a break before heading back. > Barb heard some rustling in the leaves below us on the bank. “Turkeys!” > > There were four adults crouching on the bank next to a King Sooper grocery > cart and broken concrete. A passing local bicyclists said he photographed > them here in the spring when they were poults and later watched them become > jakes and jennies, now Toms and hens. Location here: > https://goo.gl/maps/4hxSZ1zcVVuDJQ3r8 > > It was a strange Thanksgiving tableau, far from Currier & Ives. These > turkeys were at home with the sounds, sights, and smells of the Denver > sewage plant, the Cherokee coal plant, rumbling coal trains, roaring semis, > a homeless encampment, an oil refinery, and a concrete crushing mill. > > Nature persists, even in difficult conditions, and so may we all this > Thanksgiving and in the coming months 'til spring, when the pandemic may > finally end. > > Best, > Tom Wilberding > Littleton, CO > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/c79c5053-e24f-4692-889d-5c9011ebc5a9n%40googlegroups.com.
