Haven't Seen Ms. Hopper for Two Years...

...but the way both of these photos show a turkey with the same foot held off the ground, I have to wonder if she's returned.

It would be wonderful and amazing if it turns out to be her!

Sunday Flashback: Ms. Hopper

With little to post today, I thought it might be a good time to remember Ms. Hopper, a turkey with a permanently-disabled leg. She came to trust me enough that she would come to my call and let me feed her every day one cold winter. She disappeared in the Spring, so I can only assume she's Hoppin' around Heaven these days.

To see more photos and learn more about Ms. Hopper, click on her label in the list on the right side of this page.

Challenge/Day 4/Made It...Barely

By my count, it rained at least 5 times Wednesday and even sleeted on me while in the woods. I did get 3 new entries (and ONLY 3) for the challenge, but first, a deer photo to replace the lousy one from earlier in the week.
Peak wind gusts were 39 mph on Wednesday, so there were not many bird photos. Fortunately I did get this lone cardinal.
Any other week, I'd have a hundred chipmunk photos, but here is the first one the cameras caught this week.
It only seems appropriate that the challenge's turkey photo would be Ms. Hopper. She picked the right day to show up at a camera!
My friend Don predicted I would fail in this challenge -- and I'm starting to believe he will be correct. The weather is supposed to be much nicer the next two days, but unless I get real lucky with a number of different birds, it's going to be tough. (I still need 3 new ones for Friday's post AND 3 more for the weekend post - the planned last day of the challenge.)

There are certainly more animals out there, but I have yet to get my first photo of a groundhog or a skunk, and it's extremely rare for the cams to catch a fox or coyote. We'll see...

Another Variety Pack

A couple of new camera spots, but the cast of characters remains the same - starting with a turkey.





This one is very similar to the mystery creature photo I posted earlier in the week. Based on the other pictures captured right after this one, I'm convinced it is a raccoon.

Ms. Hopper surprised me by finding this spot. She stayed in the area for over an hour, so there were about 30 new pictures of her.

This flock showed up a bit later - so Ms. Hopper got first dibs on the feed.

More Primping & Preening

Ms. Hopper decided to climb up on this old stump for some feather work. The series included 34 photos and spanned over 30 minutes.

Hasty Generalization about an Unrepresentative Sample

It appears I committed two Logical Fallacies last week in my posting titled "The Chair Mystery." If you recall, I had eliminated deer as a possible suspect in the daily disappearance of the corn, as I had a couple of videos showing deer walking right by the chair.

To illustrate my error, say you went shopping at a large supermarket and saw 5 kids as you traveled the aisles--two with black hair, one with dark brown hair and two with red hair. You notice that the two red-headed kids are either grabbing things off the shelves, running around the store, or screaming in tears when denied a candy bar, while the other three kids are much better behaved, and you conclude that all red-headed kids have more behavior problems while shopping than do kids with other colors of hair.

I watched videos showing at least 5 deer walking past the chair and concluded that NO deer were eating the corn.


Yesterday's video showed a raccoon sniffing around the chair, but not eating off of it. What I intentionally didn't point out is that by the time the raccoon appeared at the chair, the corn had already been eaten by the deer. I'm guessing that again it would be a Hasty Generalization to assume raccoons won't eat off the chair; perhaps it's simply a case of the Early Bird Gets the Worm!

Finally, the recent ice and wind storms have made a real mess of the woods, but at the same time provided some new and interesting spots to place a camera. I set a cam on one such spot - and lo and behold, Ms. Hopper drops by to let us know she's still doing fine.

Watch the Feet

Pay attention to the feet in the first video, and you'll understand 1) one of the main ways turkeys find food, and 2) why I think it's important to feed Ms. Hopper whenever I find her...as she cannot do what the others do.


The second video was captured just 15 minutes before I found and fed her Wednesday. And in a personal note to Mikey, I did relay the message that I promised you I would give to her. As far as I know, there was no one else in the woods to hear me talking to a turkey, though I'm keeping an eye out for the men in white coats.

It's the Weekend!

Do deer yawn? Once again, you'll have to click to enlarge the photo to see the deer's mouth, but 'yawning' is all I can come up with to explain this one

Here's a close-up of Ms. Hopper, who has survived another week, despite having a new enemy in the woods -- Luggage (my cat) -- who goes with me when I check the trail cams and has suddenly taken to chasing Ms. Hopper. I'm working hard to break that habit.

Hopper's in the background of this one too, angrily watching a deer eat the corn I left for her. I thought this was a secret feeding spot that only Hopper and I knew about, but the word's out.

This video shows a deer coming in for an extreme close-up.

Grooming and Preening

I can't imagine a better set of pictures of Ms. Hopper. 30 minutes elapsed between the first and last photo, and yet she barely moved a foot. You will want to click on a couple of these to get the full sense of the color and detail in these photos.

Sure Would Like to See This Out My Window Today...

...instead of the layers of snow and ice! Yesterday when I went back to the trail cams, there were huge limbs falling in the woods about once a minute, so I decided it was too dangerous to enter the woods to retrieve the memory cards. That's why you get a flashback photo today.

Just on the edge of the woods, though, I found Ms. Hopper, who also must have realized the woods were unsafe. She was in some brushy overgrowth between the woods and the clearing - and very happy to get some corn from me! She seems to have weathered the storm just fine; that's one Tough Turkey.

Slim Pickings

Trail cams images were nothing special yesterday, but while checking them, I took my digital camera with me. These photos should give you a good idea how close Ms. Hopper approaches me these days.

Bargain Bird Seed: One Critter's Trash is Another's Treasure

So I guess the birds that come to the feeder outside my window are spoiled. I bought 25 pounds of a bargain-brand bird feed mix, and they were tossing 2/3 of it on the ground. I decided to move the feeder to one of the cam sites because 1) I figured those birds wouldn't be so picky, and 2) if they WERE still wasteful, perhaps Ms. Hopper would benefit. 24 hours later, it appears I was correct. (Feeder is hard to see, but it's in the tree.)

I Was Starting to Get Concerned...

...as I had not seen Ms. Hopper since we got snow two days ago. As the video shows, she's still alive and hopping!

Here's Why You Rarely Find a Matched Pair

Shed hunting would be more rewarding if they'd drop them both at the same time.



In other news, Ms. Hopper walked up to within 10' of me in the woods yesterday and ate corn for about 5 minutes. For the last few days, I've been making a horrible imitation of a turkey call every day when in her general area while doing the corn drop. Today I spotted her on the ground about 50' from me as I entered the woods. I stopped walking, gave my 'call' a few times, and tossed a handful of corn on the ground. Ten minutes and a dozen hops later, she was eating corn almost at my feet!

A Look at Ms. Hopper

I hope you're not getting tired of seeing this turkey. Here's a video to show you the hop, hop, hop, rest.

Sunday Bonus Shot

This is not a trail cam photo, but one I took through my cat-door window with my digital camera. This poor turkey has a bad leg, and I watched her take almost a half-hour to walk down the 200' path to my yard...hop, hop, hop, rest - hop, hop, hop, rest. The good news is that she can fly perfectly and land in a treetop with just the one leg. She's been in my yard the past 3 days eating under a bird feeder.