{"id":406698,"date":"2025-11-26T19:51:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T19:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/406698\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T19:51:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T19:51:26","slug":"wild-turkeys-thrive-in-unexpected-parts-of-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/406698\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild turkeys thrive in unexpected parts of NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Move over, pigeons! Wild turkeys<\/a> are strutting their stuff as another symbolic Big Apple bird.\n<\/p>\n

Even as thousands of New Yorkers gobble up turkey on their Thanksgiving dinner plates, wild turkeys are thriving in the city\u2019s urban wildlife landscape. Native to North America, turkeys live throughout the city, scouting out habitats that have tall trees and delicious treats, such as, well, bugs.<\/p>\n

Wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) are flockin\u2019 around NYC. Much of that avian action takes place on Staten Island<\/a>, mostly to the delight, but sometimes to the dismay, of local residents who talked turkey with amNewYork.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like seeing them around. It gives Staten Island a country feel,\u201d Mary, a Staten Islander, said. \u201cI see them mostly around Dongan Hills.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Islander Alice Kellman shared a story about a mama turkey who laid 13 eggs in her front yard.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a ball watching her,\u201d Kellman said. \u201cShe would leave during the day, I guess, for food and come back and sit on them at night.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

And then, the eggs hatched and poults (baby turkeys) emerged, she said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin a day or two, they were all walking around. Adorable,\u201d Kellman said. \u201cWe kept our distance, but she seemed to be okay with us near her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Many Staten Island turkeys use the grassy grounds at Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeze as their headquarters. It can be \u201coverwhelming,\u201d according to some nearby residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t live far from [the] hospital, but it\u2019s all over the place,\u201d Cristina Prenice said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Wild turkeys are a feathered phoenix<\/p>\n

The wild turkey\u2019s story is one for the record books.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Once nearly wiped off the map by unregulated hunting, these magnificent birds have staged one of conservation\u2019s most spectacular comebacks \u2014 having once been almost eradicated to become a\u00a0feathered icon right in the heart of the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

\"aA turkey gobbles on a Staten Island sidewalk in 2024.Photo by Gerard Lennon<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are now relatively abundant in parts of NYC, but a hundred years ago, they were nearly wiped out by hunting,\u201d Jessica Willson, executive director of the NYC Bird Alliance (formerly NYC Audubon) explained. \u201cBy the late 1800s and early 1900s they were all almost gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

But soon thereafter, smart-thinking humans stepped in with effective strategies to save the hefty avians.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough the 1900s, several decades of habitat restoration and wildlife management based on science and biology brought those birds back,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cAnd now, wild turkeys are pretty abundant in parts of NYC, including Staten Island, where they\u2019re very common, and you\u2019ll see them in the larger parks of the Bronx, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservation efforts can take time, sometimes decades, to see results. However, Wilson explained that NYC has done an effective job of saving both turkeys and their natural habitat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPopulation needs to grow over time, and restoring the habitat and protecting the habitat that is already there has helped,\u201d Wilson said. NYC has done a great job of that in the last few decades. You\u2019re seeing birds, like wild turkeys, exploring and using that habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkeys are an ancient avian species that has walked the Earth longer than Homo sapiens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cool thing about them is that they have fossil records from the U.S. that date back more than 5 million years, so they\u2019ve been here for years and years,\u201d said Kaitlin Hunt, an Urban Park Ranger with NYC Parks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keeping things natural and keeping ticks away<\/p>\n

In general, turkeys and other birds are a critical part of the ecosystem, conservationists say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBirds pollinate native plants, they control pests and connect people to nature,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cTurkeys do all of those things.\u201d
\n\"manAstoria the turkey charms New Yorkers with her beautiful plumage.Photo by David Lei\n<\/p>\n

They are also opportunistic animals that can inhabit places like woods, edges of forests and lawns, places where insects, including ticks, are often found.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere there is food, they will go,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cThey do like wooded areas, they do like more open meadows as well. As omnivores, they like to eat insects, berries, plants, nuts. But a lot of insects also like those open meadow areas where they are going to be pollinating a lot of those flowers and grasses. That\u2019s where the turkeys are going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkeys find an ideal habitat in NYC \u2014 even in Lower Manhattan, which is more known for its finance than its feathers.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Last year, a female turkey (called a hen) made headlines when she was spotted strutting her stuff alongside the bustling traffic of Midtown Manhattan<\/a>. Cops and animal experts tried to wrangle her to safety, but ultimately decided she did not need to be captured.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Named Astoria, after she was once spotted in the Queens neighborhood, she later moved to Lower Manhattan and lately has been calling Battery Park home.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

How Astoria commuted from Queens to Manhattan is anyone\u2019s guess, but she likely used her wings. Despite their heft, turkeys are powerful and can fly short distances at around 50 mph. (The bigger question, of course, is whether Astoria paid the congestion pricing toll upon entering Midtown.)<\/p>\n

While humans should not approach wild turkeys, birders said New Yorkers should look at \u2014 from afar \u2014 just how well Astoria is thriving in Battery Park.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe encourage New Yorkers to celebrate her and appreciate her, from a distance, let her stay wild, take a photo and let her continue on her Manhattan commute,\u201d Wilson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New Yorkers would like to take action to protect birds in NYC can register for the NYC Bird Alliance\u2019s annual Christmas Bird Count, which will be held on Sunday, Dec. 14.\n<\/p>\n

Hundreds of volunteers will fan out to parks and green spaces across Manhattan \u2014 including at Battery Park, where Astoria hangs out \u2014 to collect data that will help conservation action to protect birds.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Move over, pigeons! Wild turkeys are strutting their stuff as another symbolic Big Apple bird. Even as thousands…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":406699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,3425,746,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,191809,44244,24672,44599,188487,67,586,132,5230,191810,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-406698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-animals","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nyc-bird-alliance","18":"tag-nyc-parks","19":"tag-pm-newsletter","20":"tag-thanksgiving","21":"tag-turkeys","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-urban-park-rangers","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115617746100082084","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}