A wild turkey wanders through Toronto's West Lodge Park in June.Peter Welsh/Supplied
Peter Welsh runs a Facebook account called Pete Witnesses Nature, where he posts photos and videos of the wildlife that Torontonians might otherwise miss as they hurry about the city clutching phones and avoiding eye contact.
There are bumble bees cavorting in echinacea pollen and warbling vireos swallowing large berries with tiny beaks. Even the lowly urban pigeon appears courtly and dignified in his frames.
None of his close encounters with urban nature could prepare him for what he saw in late June a few steps from his home in the Parkdale neighbourhood. As he entered a small park sandwiched between a busy commuter-train corridor and traffic roaring along Lansdowne Avenue, he spotted a creature of feastly proportions meandering along the fenceline.
“I didn’t even do a double take, it was more like a quadruple take,” Mr. Welsh said. “It’s like seeing an alien or a UFO. You know what it is, but you think it can’t be.”
The extraterrestrial was in fact an eastern wild turkey – T-Rex feet, stilts for legs, a face only a blobfish could admire.
The turkey in West Lodge Park. Once wiped out in Ontario, turkeys now continue to grow in numbers.Peter Welsh/Supplied
Turkeys were once common in what is now Ontario, before people hunted them out of existence a little over a century ago. But one of the most successful reintroduction programs in Canadian history has brought the provincial population gobbling back to life, such that they’re now poised to retake the capital.
“We’re definitely seeing more and more turkeys over time,” said Karen McDonald, senior manager of ecosystem management at the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.
The turkey’s range and population are likely greater today than in its precolonial heyday, say wildlife experts, and their numbers continue to grow, pushing into urban centres.
The last native Ontario turkey was killed in the early 1900s. For decades afterward, biologists tried to introduce captivity-raised birds. But the chicks would imprint on their human captors and never learn vital survival skills, rendering them oblivious to hawks, raccoons, coyotes and other wild predators, according to retired provincial biologist Dave Reid.
In the 1960s, American researchers developed a cannon-propelled net that allowed them to capture groups of live wild turkeys and successful restocking efforts began across the United States.
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Dave Ankney, an avian ecologist at the University of Western Ontario, encountered the rejuvenated turkey populations in the U.S. during a hunting trip and, in 1984, convinced the province to launch its own program.
Provincial authorities eventually traded moose to Michigan, river otters to Missouri and partridges to New York – in return for 274 wild turkeys.
Mr. Reid co-ordinated some of the releases, often bringing his kids along.
“I remember I didn’t like it,” said his son, Garrett Reid, creator of Wild Turkey Ontario, a podcast series and collection of social media accounts devoted to telling the reintroduction story. “You had to worry about this 30-pound bird knocking you over. But I eventually came to appreciate it and I’ve been a turkey hunter my whole life.”
Today, there are around 100,000 turkeys and 50,000 turkey hunters in Ontario, according to the province. Generally, only about one in three hunters actually bags a bird in any given season.
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The species typically congregates in farmers’ fields, open meadows and woodlots, said Jenn Baici, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto and Trent University who has studied wild turkey populations. But as their rural habitats get disturbed and developed, she’s seen them move into urban areas, where they have developed a propensity for bird feeders.
“Turkeys are very routine and consistent in their behaviour, which means that once they find a food source that they deem to be reliable and safe, like a backyard bird feeder, they are likely to continue to visit, especially during the winter months when natural food sources are more difficult to access,” Dr. Baici said.
Around the time of Mr. Welsh’s encounter, neighbourhood group chats on Toronto’s west side were lighting up with other sightings. Commenters on one photo debated whether it was Wilber or a Wilma. Definitely a Wilma.
The appearances tended to neighbour a rail corridor. People theorized that Wilma and company waddled through vegetation abutting the rail lines, using the same route to access Toronto as tens of thousands of human commuters. They can fly, but rarely more than a couple hundred yards into the nearest tree, where they tend to roost at night.
More importantly to Mr. Welsh, the turkeys have prodded people to talk about the unappreciated natural world that envelops Canada’s largest city. They are looking up from phones, making eye contact. He often takes day trips among abandoned properties in the city, where nothing seems to proliferate but weeds and broken bottles, just to marvel at the scrappy species that thrive at the margins. “We take everything from them and they still survive,” he says. “That’s my takeaway, from all this: the absolute resilience and adaptability of nature.”