The turkeys are back!

A few weeks ago I saw 2 bush turkeys wandering around our back yard, so it was time for 'Tommy Turkey' aka Faux Turkey to be brought out of storage.

For now, I've placed Tommy Turkey near an empty veggie patch

DH's friend Tim made the corflute bush turkey for me last year, as he said it would cause any male turkeys to look elsewhere for a place to build the mound it makes for its mate to lay eggs in. The male turkey tends to wreak havoc while it is building the mound and so it was in 2012 that I had my vegie gardens completely destroyed. Tommy Turkey appears to have kept the males away last year but the females continued to come for a visit each day and dig up and eat my sweet potatoes and ordinary potatoes! But no wholesale destruction like the year before!

The same day I took a photo of the bed that I had planted up after we came back from our holiday...(just in case it got destroyed by a turkey, I could at least look back at what the bed had looked like! lol) 

This morning, 2 weeks later, I took another photo...

Yep! Turkey has left it alone...for now!

And in a large pot on the other side of the backyard, I have an eggplant; but one of the small varieties. In 2012 I had to put rocks etc in the pot plants to stop the turkeys digging in the pots...so fingers crossed that my eggplant may continue to bear fruit.

Former posts about my 'battles' with the bush turkeys can be found here, here and here. 

More about the turkey in the garden!

Today DH helped me finish enclosing 2 of my 3 veggie patches (the third is fallow at the moment). This morning I had caught Mr Turkey scratching around in the second one as it wasn't enclosed completely. I discovered that he was eating a potato that he had dug up out of the garden bed. I planted those last week but might have to just plant some more in case there aren't any under the ground any more :-).

One dug up seed potato with a big chunk bitten out of it, lol

By this afternoon, more plastic mesh had been purchased and the bed of potential potatoes was fully enclosed...we've run the mesh around the potted tomatoes and parsley. Three of the nasturtium seedlings that I planted last week have survived being dug up. To me, nasturtiums are a part of spring!

Yesterday, we were 80cm short of mesh for the other veggie bed, so that was finished off today too.

 Mr Turkey dug up one lot of potatoes that had just started to have green leaves shoot up through the soil but there was only a little bit of damage to the first planting of potatoes in this same bed. The lettuces and tomatoes seem to have been spared...

Elsewhere in the garden all is fine...albeit some pruning and weeding needed in a few parts. The turkey doesn't see to go down the side of the house or walk around the front garden looking for things to destroy.
Many of the plants have been flowering for weeks...they thought it was Spring at the beginning of August not September! lol

My potted succulent here is flowering...

The old fashioned geranium (pelargonium) has been covered in blossoms too

 My Marmalade plant ( Streptosolen jamesonii) has the most flowers that I've ever seen on it!

And my NZ Christmas bush has been flowering for quite a few weeks...

When DH mentioned to his friend Tim, that I had a turkey problem in my veggie patch. he sent us this photo. Apparently he makes these and he says they work...they fool turkeys into going elsewhere as they are very territorial. If the turkey keeps coming back and there is still 'another turkey' in that area, Tim says that they just won't come back. We are going to give it a try...

This is Tim's explanation...
' Here it is. It works, believe it or not. Male turkeys are territorial and if one with a large wattle doesn’t move on, then the newcomer does. I’ve done a few out of corflute and a friend’s friend’s neighbour in West End who is a landscape gardener was very sceptical until he saw the results himself. I should go into business. This friend of a friend said they would sell like hotcakes at the West End Green Markets.'

So, as they say, stay tuned!
 

It's still all happening around here!

In my last post I forgot to mention that DH and I are heading off to our annual parish Trivia Night tomorrow; last year our team came second, losing by 1 point. Whether we win or not is immaterial...it's always lots of fun and it raises funds for the parish.
I also forgot to mention that yesterday I signed up to go to the 'Let's Get Stitched' weekend in March 2014. Read about this wonderful event here. I'm already excited about this!

Now finally, it is that time of year again, albeit a bit early, when the male bush turkey is looking for somewhere to build a mound ready for his mate to lay eggs in. Last year I wrote about 'my battle' with one particular bush turkey. This year there are 2 of them. Over the last few weeks, veggie seedlings have been disappearing overnight...my worst fears were realised this morning when I saw the 2 turkeys digging up my garden beds...so out came the star pickets, the plastic trellis mesh and the big hammer. yep! Once more my veggie gardens are encircled to protect my plants.
Here's what happened last year in November...

Let's talk turkey...a bit of a drama in the vegie patch...

Bush or scrub turkey to be exact... Recently I wrote about having to put some trellis plastic around a garden bed to stop the bush turkey digging out the plants. Well, at that stage he was leaving the raised beds alone, but all of that changed in the last week or so. Each morning I would find at least one plant uprooted in the larger raised bed, and soil heaped up in mounds.

Then. on Tuesday morning of this week, this is the scene that greeted me when I went to water the vegetables. What a mess! This had been a garden bed with zucchini plants, thriving silverbeet plants and tomato plants. The turkey had 'raked' up leaf litter that was under the trees and shrubs on our back boundary and heaped it up in the raised bed. I tend to leave the litter under those trees as it forms a mulch for the trees but also provides cover for the lizards that live in our yard. 

The leaves were also mounded up at the end of the bed...in the photo below you can see the tradescantia plants that have been uprooted. These also grow under the trees at the back. DH and I picked up all the leaves mounded up outside the bed but it was a losing battle...when we weren't in the yard the turkey resumed mounding up leaves. He even started raking up leaves from my neighbour's macadamia tree  as well as scratching out any fallen leaves in amongst my bromeliad  bed under the jacaranda tree. DH and I decided that next morning we would buy some chicken wire to protect the garden bed.

pots, plants, twigs, fallen branches...all got raked towards the vegie garden bed

In the morning though, DH announced that he was going to contact 'Peter the Possum Man' a company that has permits to trap turkeys and relocate them to bushland. It was expensive but DH had decided that it was the way to go... So a young man came with a cage...which he placed on the 'mound' built by the turkey

He showed us how to 'set' it and explained how the trap was to be used. It had to be monitored at all times...if we went out we had to shut it. Now I wondered HOW the turkey could be enticed into the cage...what 'bait' for example??? But it was simple and ingenious how it all worked. The young man showed us how to slide a mirror in the back end of the cage...

Lol! Look there's another Maria !

The turkey sees another turkey and goes to investigate...and as he steps towards the mirror, the door slams behind him. We were shown how to take the mirror out when the turkey is trapped and turn it to the blank side and slide it back in. Then to help the bird calm down the young man left a knotted sheet to cover the cage. The young man then headed off to his next job and we went inside so the turkey would come back to his frantic raking. Within 10-12 minutes he was caught. Unbelievable!

We rang to say that the turkey was in the cage and eventually he was collected. His new home is bushland out Ipswich way...he should find plenty of leaves to scratch up there. I've lived with bush turkeys all my life but one had never chosen my yard for his mound before. It's said that that once they do that, you can never get rid of them or their mound. (The males build the mounds for the lady turkey to lay her eggs in. The heat of the mound incubates the eggs for eventual hatching, so we could have ended up with dozens of them next year !!!) 

Sigh...so it's all happening again!

Let's talk turkey...a bit of a drama in the vegie patch...

Bush or scrub turkey to be exact... Recently I wrote about having to put some trellis plastic around a garden bed to stop the bush turkey digging out the plants. Well, at that stage he was leaving the raised beds alone, but all of that changed in the last week or so. Each morning I would find at least one plant uprooted in the larger raised bed, and soil heaped up in mounds.

Then. on Tuesday morning of this week, this is the scene that greeted me when I went to water the vegetables. What a mess! This had been a garden bed with zucchini plants, thriving silverbeet plants and tomato plants. The turkey had 'raked' up leaf litter that was under the trees and shrubs on our back boundary and heaped it up in the raised bed. I tend to leave the litter under those trees as it forms a mulch for the trees but also provides cover for the lizards that live in our yard. 

The leaves were also mounded up at the end of the bed...in the photo below you can see the tradescantia plants that have been uprooted. These also grow under the trees at the back. DH and I picked up all the leaves mounded up outside the bed but it was a losing battle...when we weren't in the yard the turkey resumed mounding up leaves. He even started raking up leaves from my neighbour's macadamia tree  as well as scratching out any fallen leaves in amongst my bromeliad  bed under the jacaranda tree. DH and I decided that next morning we would buy some chicken wire to protect the garden bed.

pots, plants, twigs, fallen branches...all got raked towards the vegie garden bed

In the morning though, DH announced that he was going to contact 'Peter the Possum Man' a company that has permits to trap turkeys and relocate them to bushland. It was expensive but DH had decided that it was the way to go... So a young man came with a cage...which he placed on the 'mound' built by the turkey

He showed us how to 'set' it and explained how the trap was to be used. It had to be monitored at all times...if we went out we had to shut it. Now I wondered HOW the turkey could be enticed into the cage...what 'bait' for example??? But it was simple and ingenious how it all worked. The young man showed us how to slide a mirror in the back end of the cage...

Lol! Look there's another Maria !

The turkey sees another turkey and goes to investigate...and as he steps towards the mirror, the door slams behind him. We were shown how to take the mirror out when the turkey is trapped and turn it to the blank side and slide it back in. Then to help the bird calm down the young man left a knotted sheet to cover the cage. The young man then headed off to his next job and we went inside so the turkey would come back to his frantic raking. Within 10-12 minutes he was caught. Unbelievable!

We rang to say that the turkey was in the cage and eventually he was collected. His new home is bushland out Ipswich way...he should find plenty of leaves to scratch up there. I've lived with bush turkeys all my life but one had never chosen my yard for his mound before. It's said that that once they do that, you can never get rid of them or their mound. (The males build the mounds for the lady turkey to lay her eggs in. The heat of the mound incubates the eggs for eventual hatching, so we could have ended up with dozens of them next year !!!)