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Cambridge, Massachusetts Almost everyone in Harvard Square has a story to share about the wild turkeys that have invaded their neighborhood. They’ll probably have some.
Across the river from Boston, Cambridge is a city of about 120,000 people and 40 to 50 wild turkeys, according to local animal control officer Christina Correia. The city is about 6 square miles in size.
Near the 400-year-old community’s historic center, a little triangular park tucked between busy city streets has been claimed by a flock of over seven turkeys. They graze on seeds, leaves, and insects for the majority of the day. They will occasionally sip from the two water bowls that onlookers have left for them.
At other times, they become more aggressive, chasing pedestrians (particularly those who appear to be postal workers), squawking and puffing their feathers at onlookers, and attacking their reflections in automobile windows.
“Don’t mess with them,” Correia warned.
Some people, however, adore them.
The 72-year-old Judith Tran has assisted the animals in crossing the street. She has been purchasing special turkey food and supplements for the past year in order to feed the birds.
Regarding the very clever birds, Tran remarked, “They understand us and they live with us.” “We must coexist with one another and take care of the animals.”
Business in Turkey
Half a century ago, it would have been unthinkable for humans and turkeys to coexist in downtown Cambridge, much alone Massachusetts.
Due to settlers’ unrestrained hunting practices and destruction of their forest habitats, wild turkey populations, which were once widespread throughout the United States, started to decline in the late 1800s. They were almost extinct in the United States at one point.
There were no natural turkeys in Massachusetts for over a century after the last one was killed in 1851.
That was until the early 1970s, when 37 birds were moved from New York to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts by environmentalists following years of fruitless attempts to reestablish the population. After a year, there were 1,000 turkeys everywhere.
It is now estimated that the state is home to about 30,000 turkeys. Turkeys are so abundant that they are now the official game bird of Massachusetts, and the repopulation efforts have been hailed a conservation success story.
According to David Scarpitti, the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife’s turkey and upland game project leader, the state has attained turkey “saturation,” with the birds now residing in every town and city with the exception of Nantucket.
However, the swift increase in population has also forced the birds to move from rural regions in western and central Massachusetts to suburban and urban areas in the east, such as Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge, in search of food and refuge.
Over the past ten years, the turkeys have adopted cosmopolitan lifestyles and caused quite a sensation.
According to Correia, the animal control officer, “they became opportunistic with food and accustomed to people.”
According to Scarpitti, they have discovered that well-kept garden beds and bird feeders in crowded districts provide perfect grazing areas. Additionally, they have started to flourish in downtown areas with few green spaces, where they are fed by people and have fewer natural predators.
“There’s just a recipe for conflict when you end up with these high concentrations of turkeys mixed with a high human population,” Scarpitti stated.
Conflicting feelings
At the time of her first encounter with one of the turkeys, 29-year-old Elsa Kennedy had just moved from Kentucky to the densely populated Dorchester district of Boston. One morning, she discovered a brown-feathered bird perilously perched atop her fence after hearing a squawking, screeching sound outside her window.
Kennedy was somewhat aback by the response she received when she hastily called animal control to inform them that a wild turkey had escaped downtown. In an attempt to mimic a Boston accent, she answered, “Yeah, so what.”
For residents of Greater Boston, the experience was a rite of passage.
In Kennedy’s life today, turkeys are a common annoyance. Kennedy claimed that on a particularly unpleasant morning lately, while she was tying her shoe with one hand and shoving it away with the other, an aggressive turkey grabbed her breakfast sandwich.
They are gang-like. Exasperated, she remarked, “They’ll just, like, literally come walking” toward you. “And hitting them is not an option.”
In Massachusetts, turkeys are game birds that can be hunted in the spring and fall, which isn’t practical in populated regions. There are severe penalties and potential jail time for hurting turkeys outside of specified hunting seasons.
The actual turkeys may be dangerous. One of the birds assaulted a postal worker in Cambridge last year, necessitating the replacement of his hip. Giant scratches were left all over a Boston woman’s automobile when a turkey viciously pecked at it in July.
For several city blocks, Nancy Farrell, 71, reported seeing a gang of toddler-sized, 20–30 pound turkeys stalk a man dressed like a mail carrier.
However, not all locals find their courageous neighbors’ activities annoying. The ridiculousness of the birds has delighted some people.
About 15 years ago, Caroline Burns, 56, said she was amazed when she saw a wild turkey for the first time in her Brookline neighborhood. Everything around her house was covered in a thick coating of snow in the dead of winter, yet she could see turkeys poking through the barren branches up on the treetop.
Burns remarked of the bird’s tenacity, “I was impressed.”
In 2018, illustrator Burns made the decision to create a piece of art that parodied the concept of the “annoying turkey” as birds started to clog roads and aggravate locals.
Burns stated that she wants to let people understand the more whimsical and comic aspect of the urban fowl rather than worried about its hostility. She has assisted Brookline in embracing its growing population of turkeys.
The city featured one of Burns’ turkey drawings on its 2024 “I voted” stickers and placed life-size fiberglass turkey sculptures in downtown areas earlier this year.
Burns views her neighbors who are turkeys as a “success story.”
“Seeing turkeys around town may come as a surprise, but it’s an example of wildlife returning,” she said. “I’ve always liked that.”
Arriving in a nearby city
The epidemic has started to spread from coast to coast, though urban turkeys are already a familiar sight in Massachusetts’ busiest neighborhoods.
With the exception of Alaska, every state in the US is currently home to turkeys.
Earlier this year, a wild turkey named Astoria made news in New York City when she moved into a tree on Park Avenue and went window shopping at Saks on Fifth Avenue. Although Manhattan has been home to at least two other wild turkeys in recent decades, the creatures are more frequently seen in the Bronx and Staten Island, which have only somewhat less crowded burrows.
Other encounters between humans and turkeys have been documented in Oakland, California, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
However, Greater Boston seems to have more fugitives than any other metro area.
Scarpitti bet that if the number of turkeys in their states increases, other cities may soon start to see the same degree of mayhem.
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