TURKEY TRAGEDY FORCES RE-THINK

.. AS VIXEN STRIKES

  THE clumps of feathers told me all I needed to know.  It's happened again. Another tragedy and more loss of life but this time the villain was not a badger but a fox ... a vixen with hungry cubs to feed - and before all you townies go "aaaah, cute" with a bit of luck she will have carried out her last kill by dawn tomorrow.
 As regulars of Soho2Silo know, I'm still reeling from the badger attack which took out a goose and her entire clutch of eggs last week and while I agonised over what I could do about the turkey who chose to set up a secret nest near the hen pen (http://soho2silo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nature-or-nurture.html) I did nothing. I decided to leave it to Nature and now there are self-recriminations.

TELL TALE SIGNS: The clumps of feathers reveal tragedy

 The unfortunate goose from Sweden was called Queenie but my poor slain turkey didn't even have a name. She was one of the Three Degrees, a trio of Bourbon Reds I bought from a farm in North Yorkshire.
 In the meantime some dear friends bought me an incubator and while I was tempted to take the turkey's eggs hubby pleaded with me to let her continue and so she did until the early hours of this morning. And no, I'm not blaming he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is and in truth he is just as upset as me at the loss of more stock because we are fond of them all.
 My bedroom overlooks the scene of the crime but since I have taken to going to bed listening to BBC Radio 4 on an evening to drown out the noise of the clog dancers who inhabit the attic (more about them another time) I heard nothing.
 This morning I called in my own CSI expert and he surveyed the scene for around half an hour and went off down a bankside leading on to a river. When he returned he gave me his assessment.
 The killer was a vixen who, judging from the clumps of feathers around the nest site, had struggled to rip the Bourbon Red turkey from her nest. He says it was a vixen because a dog fox would have eaten his kill just a few yards away but this fox took the bird all the way to her lair where she would have fed her waiting cubs.

SURROGATE MUM:  Bourbon Red turkey
sits on a variety of eggs due to hatch next week

 He followed the trail of feathers through the woodland and down to the riverside, then along to a small hump-backed bridge, over a road and into some more woodland. By all accounts my turkey must have put up one hell of a struggle because of the clumps of feathers at various points en route. Delicate paw marks also revealed the sex of the fox.
 And there's more - the gamekeeper reckons she will be back and, if wanted, he will be lying in wait. I nodded vigorously. Unlike badgers, foxes are not a protected species and, as any farmer will tell you, they are a pest and should be shot on sight. No time for sentiment. I am not going to lose any more of my animals if I can help it.
 As usual, where there is death there is also hope of life. The eggs were left intact and I gathered them all up and shoved them under a turkey which is nesting in the stable. Her own eggs are in the incubator and at the moment she is sitting on a couple of abandoned goose eggs and half a dozen chicken eggs as well as a pot egg.

NEST EGG: The start of another turkey nest

 I don't know if the eggs left behind by her sister  are still in a condition to hatch - only time will tell but whatever happens you will be among the first to know.
 And there's still more - the last of the Three Degrees has started laying eggs in her own secret nest very close to the house. The gamekeeper has advised that as soon as she starts sitting on her batch of eggs I should intervene and move them all into the stable where they will be safely locked up every evening. I am going to take his advice - at the moment I feel it is better to nurture rather than leave it to Nature.
 What do you think?

NATURE OR NURTURE

.. Or should we give a helping hand?

OUTDOOR SUPER SCOUT: Davy
Crockett portrayed by Fess Parker

  HOT on the heels of his success of  finding a dead fox while out for a stroll, my city-based husband now thinks he's a cross between American frontier legend Davy Crockett and British super sleuth Sherlock Holmes. So when I threw him the latest countryside conundrum he went off into the great outdoors with an air of confidence bordering on smug.
 For more than a week now one of the turkeys goes AWOL within minutes of being let out in the morning. She feeds with the others and then wanders off, usually when I'm not looking, only to reappear several hours later after I've already convinced myself some harm has befallen her. My routine on a morning is to first open up the turkey house and place their feed a few yards away on the ground outside. By the time I go to the hen pen and release the Scots Dumpys the turkeys begin to wander into the yard towards their feed and usually peer disdainfully through the wire mesh as the hens scramble for their food. And it is in these few minutes that one of the Three Degrees seizes the moment and goes off on her mystery mission, it's as though she completely vanishes into thin air leaving behind staggs Ant & Dec, Little Boots and her two sisters.

VANISHING ACT: Five 
turkeys but where's the sixth?

 Twice now I've tried to follow her but as soon as she turns round the corner of the building and down a series of steps in the 12 seconds it takes to follow her she's gone. Her colouring as a Bourbon Red is very striking but once in woodland her feathers seem to blend perfectly into the background. I recounted all of this in detail to hubby and he vowed he'd find her, after all he found the fox didn't he? Two mornings running he failed to come up with anything but with each day he became more determined and then the Eureka! moment happened. And just as he stumbled across the dead fox this great find also happened by accident. He was working in a wooded area below the hen pen when he heard something stirring in a pile of branches, twigs and sticks he'd bundled some weeks earlier against a gable wall. Expecting to see a rat or squirrel, or something equally furry he watched and waited and to his amazement a furtive-looking turkey hen crawled through the bracken, almost limbo dancing between the branches, to emerge from her secret den. After she left, he poked around the pile of branches that you can see in the picture, below left. they're in the foreground wedged between to gable end-style supporting walls. His search was duly rewarded as he discovered no less than half a dozen eggs.

HIDE & SEEK: Can you spot the nest?

 Experiencing a mixture of excitement and irritation as he relayed the news to me I grabbed a bowl and we went off to the site to check out his story. Over the next 20 minutes we were at loggerheads over what to do. My instincts told me to collect the large speckled eggs and wait for the arrival of my incubator but he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is insisted that I let Nature take its course.
 On the one hand the turkey has shown a protective instinct, found a superb location to lay eggs and it is well sheltered if and when she is ready to sit on them. On the other hand, she's not a year old, this is her first batch of eggs and she has no experience of life as a mother; add to that she is used to sleeping inside a warm stable on an evening how will she cope with at least 25 nights under the stars? May be it's just luck that no predators have spotted her secret nest so far, but when she spends 24/7 for 25 days sitting on the nest she might not be as lucky.
 Hubby has gone back to London now,  and today I thought I would make a quick check of the nest. Here are a couple of pictures which will give you an idea of how well camouflaged she is to the human eye, but what about a fox?

SPOT THE BIRD: Can you see her?

GOTCHA: A clearer closer 
shot of the mum-to-be 

 As you can see from the picture left, she is very well hidden. I didn't see her but I stuck my camera phone into the bracken and clicked away not quite knowing what I was snapping and truth be told, I didn't realise she was in there at all because she remained completely silent throughout. I was merely trying to establish how many eggs she had laid and if they were still there so it took a while to spot her in this photograph, a bit like those babyscan pictures they show in hospitals to expectant mums, most of us sit there nodding enthusiastically too embarrassed to say we can't spot the baby. If you still can't see her check out the smaller picture above, on the right, which was taken from a slightly closer overhead angle. So what do you advise? Should I trust Nature or should I intervene, grab the eggs and incubate them in a controlled environment? Nature v Nurture - who wins?