This time of 12 months, turkeys are virtually by no means alone.
In late fall, flocks of untamed turkeys will feed collectively in meadows, digging up worms or foraging for acorns and grasses. Meals aren’t all the time peaceable — the males, or toms, are recognized to squabble and compete for meals — however they’re virtually all the time had as a group.
But on the Battery in downtown New York, Astoria the turkey is on her personal.
The lovely fowl has settled there following a prolonged keep within the quiet gardens of Roosevelt Island and a transient, chaotic stint in Midtown Manhattan. Last spring, she headed downtown to dwell among the many hubbub of vacationers who go to the park to board boats to the Statue of Liberty. She’s the one wild turkey in Manhattan.
Astoria’s transfer was seemingly motivated by a organic crucial she could by no means fulfill. Across New York Harbor, on Staten Island, there are a whole lot of turkeys. But they will hardly fly greater than a few hundred ft in a single burst, not to mention the 5 miles between the boroughs, and Astoria hasn’t but discovered the ferries.
Astoria could by no means discover a mate if she stays on the Battery. But her many human admirers hope she by no means leaves.
“I think she’s really found her home,” stated Stella Hamilton, a native birder who spends hours day by day with Astoria.
Astoria, along with her curious expression, iridescent plumage and hanging strut, is simple to love.
Hamilton has spent a long time getting acquainted with superstar birds across the metropolis, together with the long-lived red-tailed hawk Pale Male and Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who survived for a 12 months on the unfastened after his enclosure at Central Park Zoo was sabotaged, then died in February of final 12 months. She was nonetheless mourning Flaco when she heard concerning the lonely turkey dwelling on Roosevelt Island. It wasn’t till Astoria took a daring flight throughout the East River and landed within the haughty Sutton Place neighborhood that Hamilton lastly sought her out.
“The first time I saw her sitting on that balcony in the east 50s, in Sutton Place, I fell in love right away,” Hamilton stated.
The pair have since established a nighttime routine. (Another birder spends time with Astoria each morning.) Hamilton arrives on the Battery day by day round 3 p.m. and stays till the fowl is safely nestled in her oak tree for mattress. She gently reprimands youngsters who try to seize Astoria, shoos away unleashed canine that chase her and feeds her unsalted peanuts by hand.
“Grown men will talk nonsense, like, ‘You’ll be dead next month,’ ‘Who’s hungry,’ that kind of talk. It’s just so offensive that people could see her as food to eat,” stated Hamilton, a vegetarian.
But the general public who cross via the Battery are unfazed by Astoria’s presence.
“Many of the tourists are much more interested in the squirrel,” stated Sean Kiely, the Battery’s park supervisor.
If she’s not prowling the park, you may even miss her. Astoria doesn’t thoughts most human passersby, however she doesn’t abide rats. She spends most of her days foraging for worms and weeds in backyard beds or strutting via the park’s meadows. Every evening, round sundown, she revs up to roost in a tall oak tree by pacing the sidewalk and then instantly breaking into a dash to get aloft.
Hamilton gushes about Astoria the way in which somebody may about their baby or a crush: “She’s really very sweet, kind of comical. Her radiance — her feathers are beaming, especially when the sunset hits her feathers. She’s just really glorious.”
On Staten Island, the place turkey populations have exploded within the final 15 years, the birds are thought of by some to be nuisances, what with their plentiful poop and potential for aggression throughout mating season. At the Battery, Astoria assists with landscaping.
“She’s helping the gardeners out, and she knew exactly what she wanted to eat and helped us get rid of the actual weeds and left the flowers alone,” Kiely stated of Astoria’s meals across the dandelion beds. “I thought that was pretty amazing.”
Along with the peanuts, Hamilton feeds Astoria blueberries once they’re in season. Prolific birder David Barrett maintains that feeding Astoria some supplementary snacks is “necessary” so she will be able to entry the identical diet her fellow wild turkeys get exterior town, with the peanuts filling in for acorns. But metropolis wildlife officers discourage folks from feeding wild turkeys, which could lead on the birds to lose their pure concern of people. Astoria is already in shut contact with folks, and if she approaches park guests who maybe should not large fowl followers, the outcomes may very well be disastrous.
“I know it’s very tempting to want to feed large animals like turkeys,” stated Sunny Corrao, who works on human-wildlife relations for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. “But Battery Park has some really well-landscaped garden beds. There’s still insects. They’ll be eating seeds in the winter. So this turkey’s got plenty of food.”
Astoria’s arrival in Manhattan stays puzzling as a result of nobody is aware of fairly the place she got here from. She was first noticed in her eponymous neighborhood in Queens in 2024 earlier than decamping to idyllic Roosevelt Island, that skinny strip of parks and condominium towers in the midst of the East River. But she positively didn’t hatch in Queens, the place there are not any wild turkeys, stated Barrett, who runs the favored X account Manhattan Bird Alert, the place he paperwork the goings-on of native avian celebrities. There are some wild turkey flocks off within the far reaches of the Bronx or 30 miles additional east on Long Island, nevertheless it’s unlikely that Astoria traveled that far.
Wherever it was that she emerged from the egg, Astoria most likely dispersed from her hatchplace to keep away from competitors with different birds, stated Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Wild turkey populations have surged countrywide after a long time of labor to restore their numbers, particularly in New York State, the place midway via the twentieth century the species had all however disappeared. The once-reclusive birds have discovered to adapt to human improvement, and many wild turkey populations now dwell comfortably in cities with loads of interconnected inexperienced areas and forested areas, Farnsworth stated.
The Battery provides quick access to Wall Street and the 9/11 Memorial, quite than to different inexperienced areas. That apart, although, it has a lot of what Astoria requires: wooded habitats, loads of meals sources, entry to open areas and hiding locations. But there’s also site visitors, pesticides and different dangerous chemical compounds and rats, cats and canine to cope with. Her survival is spectacular, Farnsworth stated.
What the Battery doesn’t have is a male turkey with which she will be able to mate.
“I’d suspect the prospects are not good,” Farnsworth stated.
But there is a precedent for bachelorette turkeys settling down on the Battery. Before Astoria was Zelda, a single hen named for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s flighty spouse, who lived on the park for 10 years — greater than double the common lifespan of a wild turkey. She could’ve lived even longer if she hadn’t been fatally struck by a truck in 2014.
Like the eternally single Zelda, Astoria has laid eggs (unfertilized, in fact) in a nest on the bottom and refused to abandon them for days at a time, placing her in peril of hunger and liable to predation from unleashed canine. Kiely and his staff of gardeners have a system in place, from their days with Zelda, for distracting Astoria and fastidiously eradicating the eggs.
Will Astoria, like Zelda, keep single for the remainder of her days? It’s seemingly, Hamilton stated, if solely as a result of Astoria so expertly evades seize. Catching Astoria to relocate her has proved inconceivable up to now — throughout her transient tenure uptown, NYPD officers repeatedly failed to nab her, main her to wander into perilous site visitors. Since she’s wholesome, wild and appears to be thriving on the Battery, there are not any plans to transfer her anyplace.
“I am proud of her,” Hamilton stated. “This girl. I don’t even know how she survived traffic in Manhattan, for god’s sake.”
Heartbreaking as it might be that Astoria’s seek for love is to this point fruitless, her carers don’t plan to convey her a mate both.
“You might think that the solution is easy: there are lots of male wild turkeys, particularly on Staten Island, so why not bring one to her?” Barrett stated. “But a heavily used urban park like the Battery with unleashed dogs running around would be unsafe for raising tiny, defenseless wild turkey poults.”
Astoria could but once more lay lifeless eggs subsequent 12 months, if she decides to keep put on the Battery. Her followers are anxiously awaiting spring to see the place her quixotic quest for a mate takes her subsequent, if anyplace.
“We hope that she decides to stay, as there is no other park nearby in which she could have a good life,” Barrett stated. “Maybe she already figured that out.”
In the meantime, Astoria is effectively cared for. She’s monitored day and evening, is equipped along with her favourite snacks and even has a view of the Statue of Liberty from the oak tree through which she sleeps. Her plumage will shield her this winter, as will her unpaid bodyguards. She’s the one wild turkey in Manhattan, however she’s by no means fairly alone.