For the past few days there’s been a lone turkey hen wandering around our place. I shot her back feathers a week or so ago but she’s shy and hasn’t come within range often enough to get good pictures of.

This morning when I looked out my office windows there she was, eating bird seed under the feeder right by the house. I got the 200mm and extender on the camera and got it on the tripod trying to stay out of her peripheral vision. I started shooting although she was moving (pecking) fast and it was actually impossible to get her in the frame as I had too much reach on the camera (now that’s a change).

I shot a few and then my dang camera gave me an error 99 which could be any number of things but is essentially a system hang. Rebooting the camera is fast: turn it off and then on and you lose whatever was being written. I did this and kept shooting. It hung a few more times but I was able to get a few good shots. But, of course, in my haste I’d not played enough with depth of field so the only thing on the good shots in focus was her feet. Go figure. However, they are mighty interesting and even though turkeys are not aggressive, I would not want these toes ripping into me. Not to mention that her legs are jointed opposite of ours (like herons, egrets, flamingos, and many big birds so she could easily lift a leg up and give you a rip. As it was, she was scratching at the seed to uncover tastier stuff or maybe worms. Not sure if turkeys are herbivores or omnivore or, maybe, some other kind of “vore” if they really are related to ET.