[mchan889]

On a very similar note, wild turkey are actually very dangerous. Their legs have spurs on them, which have been known to cause severe or even fatal injury to small animals like dogs. I remember being told when I lived in the country to avoid aggravating them.

Example of spurs: https://www.turkeyandturkeyhunting.com/featured/turkey-spurs...

[legerdemain]

Like a lot of other male fowl, peacocks have spurs.

[mchan889]

Interesting, I was not aware that peacocks had something similar.

[adventured]

For many years I would have a flock of wild turkeys in my yard twice per year for a month period of time or so. They would come down from a distant forested area and do laps around my house, pecking for bugs in the grass. They almost never bothered anything with the house itself, they mostly kept a strict ~2-3 meter distance from it while walking around.

Typically they would have one male/tom each year, with the flock. The largest flock was perhaps 12-15 turkeys (a bizarre sight is to walk outside and randomly see a dozen turkeys sitting in a small tree). The smallest flock had four (that flock had no toms, it was just a female/hen and her three young that season).

The tom turkeys are slightly comical to observe in behavior, although they can get large and look extremely menacing. Their look gives the correct impression: you don't want a piece of this. Toms look like combat sentries, with how they move/strut and act, guarding the flock and moving it as necessary. The toms will physically force the rest of the flock to keep in an area, kind of like a herding dog. They easily go into puffed up super-alert guard mode and will march back and forth near the flock until they calm down.

Overall wild turkeys are extremely skittish. At the slightest noise or rustling, they will usually run for it, heading back to the safety of where they came from. If they see a person, they flee as fast as they can, if they can. They have absolutely no desire to stay and fight. Of all the typical wild animals I've encountered, I've found wild turkeys to be among the most skittish, prone to running at any hint of anything.

So it's six in the morning one day, I'm sleeping, and I am awakened to the sound of a very loud tack tack tack tack'ing somewhere. Like someone hitting a glass window extremely hard. I keep hearing it randomly, so I get up and walk around to investigate. It's a flock of ~8-10 turkeys, with two toms. One of the toms has found a competitor in the reflection of a sliding glass door. He's puffed up, marching back and forth like a soldier turkey and violently attacking the other tom he sees in the glass reflection. This is a very thick pane of glass he's hammering on. Every time he hits it, he seems demoralized, taken aback by the recoil/hit and or his failure to do damage. He walks it off, then ten seconds pass, and he's back in attack mode after seeing his reflection again. To his side is another tom turkey, that keeps trying and failing to get him to stop attacking the glass, trying to force him away from it. I watch for a moment, astounded at how big the tom turkey is (solidly over four feet at the head, or 122cm, when standing properly upright) and curious about the two toms. I try to approach the glass door slowly to get closer, but the instant they hear or see anything abnormal nearby, they immediately run for it. If nothing gives chase, they calm down after running away for a few seconds, and return to doing laps looking for bugs to eat. So the two toms were constantly vying for command of the flock, seemingly. The smarter tom was always trying to boss the dumber (glass pecking) tom around and dictate his movement; the dumber tom would just ignore him, certain that he was in fact in command.

The tom turkeys do look very intimidating, especially puffed up, but they love to run away if given the chance. In more than a decade of observing these flocks, and trying to get closer to watch them, I never once had a male turkey stand its ground and become aggressive toward me. 100% flight record.