The Turkey and The Cop, Most Be Matting Season!

 If Astoria the wild turkey is looking for love on Manhattan’s East Side, Day 3 of her visit did not go well.

Astoria arrived on Sunday after a short flight, only about a thousand feet across the East River from Roosevelt Island, where she had spent the last year. Once she landed in the East 50s, she migrated from one apartment building to another. Living in the one where she spent Monday night is, according to StreetEasy, “like living in a five-star hotel.” 

Astoria wouldn’t know. She never even waddled past the doormen. She nosed around in the garden out front before spending the night on someone’s balcony, sleeping.

On Tuesday morning, she fluttered and flapped her way to a nearby park, apparently looking for a late breakfast, preferably bugs. The trouble started when she decided to wade into rush-hour traffic on First Avenue. Someone called 911. The police sent an Emergency Services Unit team.

“They got the idea that they wanted to capture her,” said David Barrett, a birder who runs the Manhattan Bird Alert account on X. “They made an attempt,” he said. But Astoria flew off. The police lost sight of her. A police spokesman, describing the encounter, noted that no injuries to humans or birds had been reported.

Barrett speculated that Astoria had spent the rest of the day hiding out somewhere, terrified.

He also speculated that she had ventured into Manhattan for the same reason many people do: looking for a relationship that might lead to something. Maybe, in her case, she dreams of someone to forage with. Maybe even worth laying eggs for.

“She’s a female turkey,” he said. “It’s mating season for turkeys.”

Astoria went through the same routine last year, wandering around Manhattan from late April through mid-May. Then she went back to Roosevelt Island, where turkey crossing signs were put up. 

“She had been living for 11 months in a fairly constrained area, a couple of blocks north and a couple of blocks south of the subway station,” Barrett said. “It made it easy to find her every day.” But last week she wandered south, to the end of the island. “And while she was doing that, she was vocalizing, making her high-pitched clucking sound, which I presume is a way for her to tell another wild turkey that she’s around.”

But there were no other wild turkeys to tell. Barrett said whole flocks cavort on Staten Island, and some frolic in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx.

Manhattan? No, he said. Sadly, Astoria was all alone there.

She touched down near Sutton Place on Sunday. Jefferson Siegel, a freelance photographer who works for The New York Times, saw her outside an apartment building on East 56th Street, with a small crowd and some police officers looking on. Before long, an Emergency Services Unit team arrived and tried to catch Astoria.

“When they got really close, the turkey took flight,” he said. “The cops looked, not frustrated — but the crowd cheered the turkey.”

The next Astoria sighting was a couple of blocks away, outside the building where she spent Monday night. “The doorman said, ‘You’re not going to believe it, but there’s a turkey in the garden,” said Robert Ingram, who pulled out his cellphone, walked to within 10 feet of Astoria and snapped several photos. “I didn’t want to scare it, but it wasn’t afraid.” 

Where did she go? Probably not far, Barrett said. But he had a message for people. “If you see Astoria,” he wrote on X, “please just let her be. Admire her from a distance.” He advised against calling the police or an animal shelter. “She does not need a rescue, and rescue attempts put her life at risk, as they frighten her and make her take fast evasive action.”