Thanksgiving Survivors and Turkey Turds (for Robin Andrea & Mark)

With my recent surgery, I've been "mobility challenged" so I can't go for walks or take images.  Hopefully, that situation will improve over the next few weeks.

I'd mentioned previously that a hen turkey and her single "adolescent" chick (probably hatched in early August vs. a typical early May hatching) had been coming to my feeder to eat every morning.  They "survived" Thanksgiving, but I think I jinxed them.  On Friday after Thanksgiving, I photographed the pair at the feeder, but on Saturday I noticed a single hen mixed into an otherwise all-male flock...uh oh.  Yesterday, I noticed the same configuration of a single hen among two dozen toms.  Then, this morning, the hen came up to the feeder unaccompanied by her youngster.  I don't know what happened; we've had relatively mild weather, so I doubt that the adolescent succumbed to the elements.  I wonder if a Great Horned Owl could have picked it off its perch at night, or if the youngster fell victim to a coyote.

Follower Robin Andrea mentioned that she'd never seen turkey feces (that she recognized, anyway), and Follower Mark said that the feces of male and female turkeys twist in opposite directions, so I photographed a few examples.  When the turkeys have plenty of good stuff to eat, their feces look like those in the following images (gender unknown).  Most of the fibrous fecal matter is brownish or greenish, but there's a bit of white uric acid at one end.

If the turkeys don't have enough to eat, or if what they're eating is moist, or if they've drunk a lot of water, they produce feces like this one, which (trust me) is as slippery as a proverbial banana peel.

Funky Feces

On Friday evening, I went out to harvest basil leaves from planters on my patio.  Friday had been rainy all day, and the early evening was still drizzly.  As I approached one of the planters, I noticed a long scat on the flagstones.  Even in the relatively dim light, I could see that there was a long pale projection from one end.  "Poor animal," I thought, "loaded with intestinal worms."  But, on closer inspection, the "worm" turned out to be the tail of a vole that the animal (probably a fox or coyote) had eaten and then very hastily passed out of its alimentary track, completely undigested.

Perhaps even more strangely, when I went out to inspect the scat in better light the next morning, half of the scat was still present, but the half with the vole had disappeared.  Some coprophagous animal had taken advantage of an easy (though, to my human mind somewhat disgusting) meal.

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