The Reporter talks turkey with ACO Jenny Zahler: All you need to know about Meleagris gallopavo

Shelter Island’s Animal Control Officer Jenny Zahler loves turkeys.

Nothing unusual about that. Ms. Zahler loves all animals. When pets have been abandoned, or wild creatures need nurturing, her home is their home. Currently Ms. Zahler has, she said, “A couple of cats, a couple of rabbits, along with several tortoises.”

She takes the pets in when they’ve “been through a bad situation,” such as accidents. “And I’ve taken in some dumped pets,” or animals that uncaring people have abandoned.

She also provides hospice care for some dying animals that are given to her by the Southampton Animal Shelter for end-of-life care.

Ms. Zahler said she loves turkeys because of their personality. “The domestic ones are really friendly,” she said. “Once they get to know you, they come right up to you. They know I love them.”

As for wild turkeys, they’re just that, she noted, wild, and “are definitely not friendly,” Ms. Zahler said, “and should never be considered pets.”

As ACO, Ms. Zahler was busy with turkeys last year, but not as much in 2024. In 2023, she had 59 calls about turkeys, all but two concerning birds in distress or the victims of accidents. The two were about bird pox. This year, so far, she’s had 15 calls concerning turkeys, with two of those involving bird pox.

Bird, or avian pox, known by its clinical name of Avipoxvirus, is a virus that birds become infected with by insect bites, especially flies and mosquitos, Ms. Zahler said, although the virus can also be spread by contact with other birds.

The symptoms can be seen as warts appearing, like running sores, especially around the eyes. If she sees a turkey “that looks like it’s fighting it off, with the warts drying up, I’ll leave them alone,” Ms. Zahler said. “But I’ll see some that are losing the battle.” Those birds are then euthanized.

Looking at the stats on turkey calls to the ACO, Ms. Zahler said, “Are there fewer turkeys or are they just not getting hit by vehicles, or sick as often this year?  I’m not sure.”

On Long Island, the State Department of Environmental Conservation hasn’t released any estimates of the wild turkey population. 

Foxes are the natural predators of turkeys, and favor turkey eggs and the young birds. But last November Officer Zahler said she hadn’t spotted any foxes for a while. “People have said they’ve seen them, but I haven’t,” she added.

Back in 2018, red foxes made a comeback on the Island on the heels of nearly a decade-long decline in their numbers due to their susceptibility to mange, a disease caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabei. Although the Island’s fox population was never entirely depleted, it was drastically low for many years, with sightings of them few and far between.

But then for a time, the vibrant red canine appeared to be thriving once again. The fox population is cyclical and maybe nature’s cycle is spinning, so the turkeys are safer for now, although the future could become perilous for large flocks.

There is another predator, however, Ms. Zahler has said, that’s cutting into the turkey population. “People,” she said. One routine in her job is picking up dead or injured turkeys struck by cars.

“What’s so urgent?” Ms. Zahler asked. “Is it really such a big deal to slow down or stop for 10 or 20 seconds? There’s always another ferry.”

And so, here’s our annual Thanksgiving wrap-up on all things turkey.

RARA AVIS

Our turkeys are really not a problem but can become annoying if a number of them decide to kick back on your patio or porch. One method to keep them from roosting near your favorite porch chair, or strutting around the patio and interfering with the plants, is fencing, but that might not be too effective either.

Even though these comedians of the avian world look clumsy, they can fly, so hopping a fence is no problem. When they take wing they’re as graceful as any bird, sometimes reaching speeds up to 50 miles an hour.

ACO Zahler constantly advises Islanders to treat turkeys the same as any wildlife: Observe and enjoy, but don’t interact unless absolutely necessary.

If you’ve ever been close to a wild turkey (and what Islander hasn’t), the first impression is how magnificently ugly they are, with the heads of space aliens and those dangling red wattles.

Rare birds, they’re most content being earthbound, strutting around with the could-care-less attitude of bored aristocrats.

They can also transform themselves in a flash into completely different beings, flaring out their feathers and changing the color of their fleshy necks to blue, gray or, being an American species, red, white and blue. The toms preen like this when they’re scared or angry or looking for love.

MYSTERIOUS BEINGS

How the birds got to Shelter Island in the first place is a mystery. The National Wild Turkey Federation has found there are about seven million wild turkeys roosting in 49 states (Alaska is turkey-free), beginning to approach the numbers before Columbus landed, when there were about 10 million of them.

At the turn of the 20th century, it was a close call whether the wild turkey would survive. Hunting and loss of habitat were the factors decimating the American rafter. (Rafter is the correct word for a group of turkeys. At least that’s what author James Lipton, who wrote “An Exaltation of Larks,” maintains, and many ornithologists back him up. Lipton teased out the derivation of the term from a group of logs bound together to form a raft.)

An act of Congress saved the American turkey from extinction with the Wildlife Restoration Act passed in 1937, providing money for wildlife habitat enhancement programs.

According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, turkeys were reintroduced to New York from Pennsylvania in 1959 when about 1,400 birds were let loose in the wild.

At one time there were so many turkeys in New York, that the state exported almost 700 wild turkeys to Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and the Province of Ontario, helping to re-establish populations throughout the Northeast.

BORN IN THE U.S.A.

They’re called turkeys because of a British misunderstanding. Mario Pei, a Columbia University professor of Romance languages, has written that turkeys, though American born and bred, were imported to Britain after a stopover in the Middle East.

The Brits called everything coming from that part of the world “turkey,” as in Persian carpets becoming “turkey” carpets.

Their All-American status was famously enshrined by Ben Franklin, who wanted to make the turkey our National Bird. It speaks volumes about Franklin’s personality that he preferred the basically gentle but fiercely independent, if cranky, turkey, to the predatory bald eagle.

The eagle, Franklin wrote, “is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly … like those among men who live by sharping and robbing … he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little king-bird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district … For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours …”

Peculiar might be the last word, when it comes to all things turkey.