Interesting, and often comical, the Urban Turkey is fearless and will chase cats, dogs young children from its territory. A large black bird with blazing eyes and open mouth running straight for you at great speed with wings outstretched is a terrifying experience. Most animals run for cover.

Larger humans perplex the birds, they pace backwards and forwards head on one side gazing up at you, unsure how to proceed. You may run after them, but they don’t take it too seriously. Humans are just too slow. The moment you turn your back they are following you. Should you run, they will give chase. Turkeys know they can outrun most animals and if things get serious they can always fly away. However at night they take no chances and they roost safely high in the trees or up on buildings.

Food involves locating juicy bulbs and tubers. Using their powerful feet, they will dig and dislodge anything with a juicy bulb, corm or tuber. They have an incredible sense of smell or intuition for they will find any plant with a juicy root – and in particular those plants which are rare, treasured and of sentimental value – and they will annihilate them. Turkeys have great memories. If they find something juicy they will keep coming back to the same spot for many years. If the plant survives, move it – the Turkey will be back.

Urban Turkeys love vegetable gardens. In particular they love juicy tubers like Sweet Potato, Yacon and Jerusalem Artichoke. They lull the gardener into a false sense of security, they watch and they wait hidden out of site. Then one day when the juicy tubers are at their peak and the gardener is away they strike. The gardener arrives to find the vegetable garden demolished – the root crops and anything nearby destroyed and the ground scratched bare.

During the breeding season the male’s thoughts turn to building a nest and wooing  some females. The nest is a large mound of mulch, soil, plants and any organic matter that might lie on the ground. All day long like a miniature bulldozer he works away methodically, scraping up everything in his path to build this monument. Nothing remains around the nest but bare scratched earth. In this bare state, with all the organic matter removed, the ground is open to erosion during heavy showers and solarised by the sun killing off the soil biology.

The male turkey checks the temperature of the mound constantly, adding and removing organic matter to ensure it maintains the constant and exact temperature of 32 degrees Celsius. Then he lures the females. She too checks the temperature and if it meets with her approval eggs are laid in the mound.  Some weeks later, the chicks will emerge from the mound. They look nothing like their parents, covered in down and striped brown and black. They can run right away and head for the cover of undergrowth.

In the wild Turkeys never seem to develop the population densities that are found in urbanized areas. Foxes, wild dogs, dingos and other predators seem to stabilize the population. In the safety of the suburbs with no predators the population continues to build.

Some people enjoy feeding the Turkeys. They enjoy watching the flocks grow in size and move off to neighbouring properties. These are people are the gardener’s other enemy – the Turkey Lovers.

People have tried scaring the birds using high pressure hose water, water blasters and stones, but the moment the back is turned they will be back. Turkeys often do the most damage to gardens during dry weather when there is less food about. Be prepared at these times.

Some popular strategies used by gardeners living alongside the Turkeys:

• Don’t feed them and discourage family members and neighbours from feeding them. Put vegetable scraps in a covered compost bins.

• Avoid growing plants with fleshy roots or leaves that may interest them. If they do show interest in certain plants, avoid planting any further individuals of this species.

• Place new plants among rocks and under cages until they are well established

• Don’t apply mulch during the nest building season – late winter and spring.

• Cover tuberous vegetables plants with chicken wire. Plants will grow up through the wire during the growing season. The turkeys will try to scratch for the tubers but will eventually give up.

• Run nylon strings between stakes through susceptible plantings. The Turkeys get confused when they trip on the strings.

• Erect a solar powered electric fence around plantings (great for hares as well)

• Erect cages and enclosures over gardens as a last resort

• Cover the nesting mound in chicken wire so the male Turkey can not maintain the constant mound temperature – he will leave and go elsewhere.

• Urinate around areas of Turkey activity and into the mound (increases biological activity and mound temperature)

• Give up and leave the Turkeys to it!