Serious wildlife question

No smartass remarks, please- a serious question. How hard can a wild turkey peck? Is it hard enough to break an insulated glass panel in a sliding door? I threw some birdseed out onto the deck, since I was too lazy to suit up just to fill the bird feeders in the rain, and the cardinals that were lined up on schedule looked so sad and wet. Half an hour later, sitting here in the other room at the computer, I hear a loud banging from the kitchen, and run to investigate. I find a young tom repeatedly and with increasing ferver, pecking/head butting his reflection in the very dirty glass. 3 or 4 of his buddies were raptly watching, so he wasn't backing off. I had to actually bang on the glass to spook them back down into the yard, when usually ANY movement on my side of the glass sends them scurrying.

I don't wanna come home to find my kitchen open to the outdoors, and covered with glass. How long does turkey spring tough guy season last?

Reply to
aemeijers
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Off hand, I don't think he could break the glass. His beak would be an order of magnitude softer than glass and there is probably not enough weight behind it. I'd set up a barrier to be on the safe side. We've got a squirrel trying to bust through our slider. Hard head makes a lot of noise when he hits the glass.

Reply to
Frank

I don't think pecking from a turkey will break tempered sliding glass doors panes. Tempered glass is easier broken at the side edge. It just takes a scratch.

I have seen where golf balls have broken them. Somewhere I have some pictures (cell phone quality) where an owl flew into a slider (Andersen). When the bird hit the glass, it KNOCKED all the desert dust off him. We could see the outline of it's feathers on the glass.

Turkey season?

Reply to
Oren

aemeijers wrote in news:w6GdnSYOZqsLfTLWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

the turkey is attacking his REFLECTION in the glass,it's a "rival" to him. turn on a light behind it or put up some paper to block the reflection,and he'll go away.

Reply to
Jim Yanik

I found the pictures. What you see is DUST on the glass, not the bird.

Owl dust on glass:

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Best from the cell phone camera!

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Reply to
Oren

Birds that are drunk from fermented berries are more fun to watch.

Collide with the glass and then they take a break.

Reply to
Oren

Bullshit. Last year, some little bird in the wren family showed up in our front yard around the beginning of April, and began pecking at his reflection in our bay window. PECK! PECK! ... .PECK! PECK! every minute or two, all day long, from April to September.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Every April we'd have Cedar Waxwings pick all the cherries off our ornamental cherry, get drunk, and repeatedly fly into our living room windows. The stupid birds would keep it up until the cherries were gone and then fly off until the next April.

Reply to
krw

Drunk bird on cherries:

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Reply to
Oren

It all depends on the turkey. Some will grasp that it is not another turkey in the window quicker than others, but some will not and just keep going at it. Birds of the same species have very different reactions to reflections. And it may have something to do with the time of year related to whether or not it is mating season. During that time, their behavior changes drastically, something like pubertyhood in humans.

If this bird makes a practice of this, try taping some newspaper or a towel to the outside so he/she does not get a reflection. They might just go away, or be replaced with another one.

The birds are huge, and I do believe they could come through on a bird strike. We live in the country, and have had some pretty hard strikes by some large birds, and were just waiting for the sound of breaking glass. They do leave an amusing feather dust print on the windows. Sometimes it kills them.

Steve

Reply to
Steve B

They do like their cherries. ;-)

Reply to
krw

Interesting question! I found a small cone-shaped (about 1.4" wide on the outside of the glass, 3/4" on the inside) chunk missing out of a large picture window last year. I always figured I'd just caught a stone that I'd missed before mowing - but you've got me wondering now.

We've seen woodpeckers in the flower bed immediately in front of that window a few times, and the hole's at perfect "beak height" (although, of course, it's also a good height for a stone kicked up by the mower :-)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

Just the other night on the news they had a story about a turkey that flew through a second story office window. It apparently wasn't badly hurt. Somebody caught it and it was to be released in a wilderness area.

This was not a patio door, this was a single pane glass window.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Gill

Sounds like a strike from *inside* the house. I've never noticed a bigger chunk missing on the side towards the impact.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

Typo! I was a fumble-fingers this morning, and my 1/4" came out as

1.4"... :-)

It was definitely an outside strike, and most likely a rock thrown up by the mower, but the thread's interesting as I'd not considered a bird/ reflection problem before (we found it in spring last year, presumably when it's mating season and male birds are most territorial). Whether a woodpecker could break glass, I don't know, but they must pack quite a punch.

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

The "Hertzian cone" happens in a piece of glass when it is struck by a BB. The small hole is the side the projectile came from, and the large hole is on the other side. This principle is used in percussion flaking to create arrowheads and other tools by indigenous peoples. As a former user of a Red Ryder BB gun, I know all about what BBs can do to glass, and how you get a nice cone out of a bottle base.

A piece of gravel would have to be very small, and traveling at a high speed to do this, and may not have the mass. A larger piece would leave a round hole, like a bullet hole, unless it was safety glass, then it would shatter.

Interesting to find out the real cause.

Steve

Reply to
Steve B

They definitely got the mass to do some damage. I watched some go up into a roosting tree of great height. They took off without much of a run, and shot up into the trees with a lot more ease than I thought they would have.

I remember the WKRP in Cincinnati episode, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly". This after they tossed some domesticated turkeys out of a helicopter.

Steve

Reply to
Steve B

Or can you just tape paper or cardboard to the window at turkey eye level so there is no reflection.

Those illegal signs stuck with wires into the ground would be useful for this. I keep a supply of htem.

I had a cardinal that would fly into the 2nd floor window 5 or 10 times, then go to the other side of hte house and do the same thing there for a while. Many days, for several consecutive years. I just realized that he hasn't done that this year. He's probabably in the hospital with multiple concussions.

Reply to
mm

I don't think my cardinal was drunk, at least there were no berries nearby, none that I knew of for blocks.

Reply to
mm

Very good. I wonder if they dislike being drunk, and if they ever associate it with what they ate, and if they try to stop.

I saw drunk honeybees iirc, if not that, birds, at Patrick Henry's house near Richmond Va. Do honeybees ever get drunk?

Reply to
mm

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