Wild turkeys are moving into Montreal. Here's how to live with them
CBC
Ashutosh Jena, a PhD student at McGill University, takes photos of birds as a hobby, and that usually means those that sing rather than gobble.
But he recently trained his lens on a couple of wild turkeys while snapping pictures in Montreal's Technoparc, located in the borough of St-Laurent.
This is not a bird he would see back in his home country of India, and it's certainly not one he had seen in the wild before.
"That excites me," he said, recounting his experience on Feb. 25. "This is a new bird. This is a new species. It's the first time."
And Jena isn't the only one seeing turkeys in Montreal. They're becoming increasingly common in the city.
"We're being called more and more on scene to intervene," said William Lamontagne, a Public Safety officer in the on-island suburb of Westmount, Que.
Westmount has been letting residents know here are ways to coexist with turkeys.
"Do not approach and do not feed," the city says on its Facebook page, encouraging residents to visit its website for more tips on living peacefully with these animals as they "generally pose no threat."
It's no surprise that turkeys are moving into Montreal, according to Tadeusz Splawinski, a volunteer biologist and researcher at the Canadian Wild Turkey Federation, a conservation organization.
Wild turkeys have been moving into urban areas throughout the northeastern United States for years, and it's not unusual to see the omnivorous birds scratching around bird feeders or roadsides in search of food or the bits of gravel that help them digest, he said.
Barbara Frei, the director of the McGill Bird Observatory, said wild turkeys almost went extinct in the 1900s. They were reintroduced in the 80s, and their population hasn't stopped growing since, she said.
"They've been increasing in urban areas because there's a lot more food here and it's a bit of a safe place from predators," she said.
"We have milder and milder winters, we have less and less die-off naturally occurring."
Splawinski said turkeys, which can fly short distances, need trees to roost in and open areas for the males to display themselves during mating season.