Waltzing With Matilda
Matilda lying in the grass
Imagine living outdoors, and having no secure place to shelter. Your bed is the ground, under the canopy of a majestic oak tree, hopefully hidden in tall grass at the base of an embankment, next to a road. To avoid being seen, you lay prostrate, and motionless, throughout the day.
Restful sleep here is elusive, as there are always interruptions: vehicular traffic, work crews, deer tromping around, creatures of the night lurking in the darkness. In addition to these disturbances, temperatures range from a high of 92° to a low of 32° over the course of just a couple of days, along with intermittent rain in freezing temperatures. You are at the mercy of predators. One side of your brain must be on constant alert.
Deer looking at Matilda lying in the grass
That description would fit Matilda, a Wild Turkey who foraged on my property, and chose to nest there. I’m not exactly sure what day it was that she came waltzing into my life, but the experience forever changed my understanding regarding what it is like to be a wild bird.
I suspect it all began on March 4, 2022 when Betty (a Wild Turkey I wrote about last year) appeared in my yard after several months absence. Betty was accompanied by nine female friends and one superbly elegant Tom, a Don Juan on constant lookout for willing tail of the feathered kind. I’m pretty sure that Matilda was a member of that group of hens.
As April sunshine began warming the land, a lone hen appeared regularly once or twice a day, similar to Betty’s behavior the previous spring. Would she learn to recognize me, like Betty had done? I did not know it at the time, but Matilda would become a commanding presence in my daily routine. The memory of what happened to her would be seared indelibly into my consciousness.
I discovered Matilda’s nest by a wondrous stroke of luck while walking across the undeveloped part of my property. Had she not raised her head above the three feet high grass the moment I shuffled by, I never would have noticed her. Our eyes met, but only for an instant; I quickly averted mine so she would not become alarmed at my presence, passing a mere four feet from her secret spot.
The following day I went to an overlook where, with the aid of binoculars, I could look down to see if she was still there. She was, but she didn’t move. Was she ill? Dead? Or, was she incubating eggs? I would soon have answers to my questions.
Early the next morning, I spied Matilda in the front yard. That was just the opportunity I needed. I grabbed my camera, and before she returned, I raced out the back door to photograph her hideaway from my observation point.
You can’t imagine the exhilaration that filled my breast when I counted the eggs: 1…2..3…4…5…6…7..8…9. Nine eggs in the nest. So, Matilda had laid twelve eggs (a normal clutch), with three having been consumed by the egg bandits I wrote about in my last post.
Over the following days, I regularly checked on Matilda from my overlook. Visions of nine little turkey poults danced in my head as I calculated the probable remaining days of incubation. Nothing would keep me from witnessing opening day, the big reveal.
Meanwhile, I was curious about what Matilda did during the course of the night. Did she occasionally forage in the darkness, before egg bandits were out and about? It would be normal for her to remain on the nest once her clutch was completed. But I could hear her clucking occasionally in the pre-sunrise hours while I sat on my patio, birding by ear during the springtime avian dawn chorus.
What I needed to answer that question was the infrared camera my wife had recently purchased to ascertain what night creature was digging up her garden. I set the camera up, and that evening I went to bed confident that a full moon and clear sky would provide plenty of illumination for whatever transpired during the night.
But then again, just like in Hollywood horror movies, bad things do happen after midnight, under a full moon. Never, ever, could I have imagined what would come to pass in my garden of good and evil creatures that fateful evening.
When daylight came, I observed Matilda standing in the roadway. It would be strange for her to be off the nest during daylight, considering what happened a week earlier when three of her eggs were stolen. Her comportment was odd. At times gazing about as if in a daze, she really appeared frazzled. Something was terribly wrong.
Matilda wandered along the road, then returned to the nest area, only to walk back up onto the pavement multiple times. Figuratively, she was walking in circles, seemingly oblivious to the house cat that was stalking her.
Video of cat stalking a Wild Turkey
Matilda eventually wandered over to the other side of the road, and I seized that moment to rush down to inspect her nest. There were no eggs. No eggshells. Nothing at all, save matted grass and a single turkey feather. A chill went down my spine at the thought of what trauma Matilda experienced during the night.
I grabbed the camera which I had set up just hours earlier, purely on a whim, and sped back to my office to see what might have happened. Incredibly, the timeline of events is recorded on a grainy set of infrared photos and video clips. Had I procrastinated, as I sometimes do with chores, in setting up the camera, I would have known nothing about Matilda’s harrowing, nightmarish experience on April 17, 2022.
The attacks begin shortly after midnight. Matilda faces a series of existential threats:
12:08 a.m. - Two raccoons are the first marauders to appear. Matilda heroically stands her ground and chases them off.
Video of raccoons attacking a turkey
12:09 a.m. - A coyote dominates the scene. Matilda is no match for this deadly predator, which the motion sensor camera captures on and off during the next forty minutes, most likely devouring several eggs.
Matilda defends herself against a coyote
12:51 a.m. - A raccoon reappears and, once again, Matilda bravely attempts to chase it off.
1:54 a.m. - Two raccoons march through the nest area. Matilda does not appear in the clip. Nothing is recorded by the camera during the next three hours.
5:12 a.m. - Matilda walks into the camera field of view. She appears to be carrying an egg. I looked for it, but did not find that egg anywhere. I suspect that, having spent at least three weeks on the nest with minimal sustenance, she was famished and she ate her remaining vestige of a future generation.
Video of turkey carrying an egg
7:15 a.m. - Matilda is in my back yard looking for food. I toss out a few handfuls of sunflower seeds, as was my usual custom. Sitting on the ground a respectful distance away, I watch as she eats every seed she can find. In parting, and passing in front of me, she utters a single, loud “cluck.”
Oh, Matilda, my Braveheart, you are so welcome.
Matilda remained on my property, or in very close proximity, for the next few days. The last I saw of her, she spent most of an afternoon preening in the warm sunshine. Then, as subtly as she had made my acquaintance weeks earlier, Matilda slipped softly away into the anonymity of the oak woodland foothills of the Sierra, south of Yosemite National Park, where I make my home. With her departure, the waltz music died. Still, I’ll always have April, 2022.
Unlike Betty whose morphology makes her stand out from the flock, Matilda will be impossible to identify in a lineup of hens next year when the turkeys return to the hills and hollows of my rural community. Will she recognize me?
Celebrate birds.
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