I saw Wild Turkeys but I’m not sure they count. This turkey question has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. Pure coincidence. I was on the Interstate, barreling through southern Wisconsin. In a distant field there were a flock of turkeys. Black, skinny, wild-looking. Their profile, their shape, their behavior made them unmistakable. One problem: they were a quarter mile away, and I was going 70. I wasn’t sure they counted as a sighting. There was glass, steel, concrete, truck exhaust and lots of open space between them and me. I wanted to count them. After years of bird watching I’d never been able to put Wild Turkeys on my list. But did they count? Once, in Yellowstone I saw a grizzly bear with two cubs. But I was on a high mountain road and the bears were in a valley miles below. I’d never have noticed if there weren’t a few people looking at them through scopes. In my binoculars they were small dark specks. Can I say I saw Grizzlies? I honestly don’t think so. In Alaska I saw Pigeon Guillemots, exotic sea birds of the North Pacific. But they were on a cliff and I was on a boat. I knew they were Guillemots, but they were too far away for me to feel that we were in the same place at the same time. Was it a sighting? All this came back—the bears, the Guillemots—as I sped past turkeys in a Wisconsin field. I guess serious birders have a protocol to determine when a sighting counts and when it doesn’t. I only have myself to please. And I gotta be honest: I’m not pleased when I see a bird for the first time as I’m going 70 and the bird’s a quarter mile away. The wild turkey gets a half-hearted, penciled-in spot on my list.
