(no subject)
May. 31st, 2015 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynMuch to my sorrow, my flight instructor wasn't available this weekend. No helicopters until next Saturday.
On the bright side, I got to go to Spectacle Island, which I'd been meaning to do for ages. Turns out there's wild turkeys. I've been looking for any kind of indicator that they may have been introduced to the island as part of turning it from a hell-pit landfill into a national recreation area, but no, they didn't do that; the turkeys got there under their own power. Apparently while they normally only fly up to 100 yards at a time, they can do up to a quarter of a mile at once under some circumstances, plus they can swim. Perhaps they were island-hopping from Hull or something. Who knows.
What surprised me was that when I mentioned the bird to the next people I met on the trail, as they were headed in the direction I had just come from, they asked if it was the kind of turkey that attacked you. I thought they were joking. I later found out that the wild turkeys that have turned up in the Boston and Brookline area over the past few years have been very aggressive and very territorial towards humans. This one, not so much; it looked up from what it was doing in the rock-lined ditch by the side of the rail and that was that. I mean, I did apologize to it for interrupting, but that was it.
(I'd been picking up what little trash there was along the trails as I went. You're not supposed to discard anything on Spectacle Island; the only trash containers on the island are in the stalls of the women's restroom. I'd just grabbed my third or fourth bit of stuff that wasn't supposed to be there when I encountered the turkey. Couldn't help but feel that the bird wouldn't have shown itself to me if I hadn't been taking the trash away.)
On the bright side, I got to go to Spectacle Island, which I'd been meaning to do for ages. Turns out there's wild turkeys. I've been looking for any kind of indicator that they may have been introduced to the island as part of turning it from a hell-pit landfill into a national recreation area, but no, they didn't do that; the turkeys got there under their own power. Apparently while they normally only fly up to 100 yards at a time, they can do up to a quarter of a mile at once under some circumstances, plus they can swim. Perhaps they were island-hopping from Hull or something. Who knows.
What surprised me was that when I mentioned the bird to the next people I met on the trail, as they were headed in the direction I had just come from, they asked if it was the kind of turkey that attacked you. I thought they were joking. I later found out that the wild turkeys that have turned up in the Boston and Brookline area over the past few years have been very aggressive and very territorial towards humans. This one, not so much; it looked up from what it was doing in the rock-lined ditch by the side of the rail and that was that. I mean, I did apologize to it for interrupting, but that was it.
(I'd been picking up what little trash there was along the trails as I went. You're not supposed to discard anything on Spectacle Island; the only trash containers on the island are in the stalls of the women's restroom. I'd just grabbed my third or fourth bit of stuff that wasn't supposed to be there when I encountered the turkey. Couldn't help but feel that the bird wouldn't have shown itself to me if I hadn't been taking the trash away.)
