The Turkey Trot

By Keith Michael

“What’s THAT?!” 

Twenty cell phones from a tour group rushing to the Statue of Liberty Ferry cock to the ready for a celebrity sighting.

“It’s ‘Astoria’ the Wild Turkey!” shouted the umbrella-wielding tour guide into the crowd’s 20 earbuds. I was astonished that the guide was up on the latest avian news and even knew her name.

Wild Turkeys can be counted in the dozens, if not hundreds, on Staten Island, but a Wild Turkey in Manhattan is top-of-the-hour news. Astoria, this solo turkey hen foraging on the lawn of The Battery, who was now turning heads, began her runway to fame over a year ago in her namesake neighborhood of that fair eastern borough: Queens.

It was April 2024 when the locals near Astoria Park saw celebrity potential in this huge, gangly, charismatic bird. Perhaps it was sheer wanderlust, or hormones percolating during the mating season, or wanderlust ramped up by the spring dating scene that fueled her flight across the East River to that Island of Dreams: Manhattan. 

Though turkeys seem too large and ill-proportioned to stay airborne, they actually fly quite well for short-distance sprints. In fact, they fly up into trees every night to roost. For several weeks, Astoria ranged up and down the tony center gardens of Manhattan’s Midtown Park Avenue. The paparazzi caught her window shopping on Madison and Fifth avenues. Once again, her dating app lured her back across the East River. This time, Roosevelt Island was her destination, where she was first reported on May 17, 2024.

For nearly a year, Astoria called Roosevelt Island home. Not a stay-at-home girl, she explored the whole island from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial on the south end to Lighthouse Park at the north point. Perhaps she pondered whether to return east to her Queens homeland or looked wistfully west toward the Manhattan skyline. That whole time, was she thinking, “Where’s that Tom Turkey just for me?”

Fast forward a year: spring fever struck again. On April 13, for the residents of Sutton Place, accustomed to traveling to the Hamptons for a curated shot of nature now nature was on their doorsteps. Astoria tried out windowsills and front stoops, hedges and balconies to find one that was “just right.” The NYPD was summoned to apprehend her, presumably to relocate her for her own safety. But Astoria would have none of it. She was brought up “free range” and “free range” she would stay.

I then lost track of reports of her whereabouts for several days until a viral video from a friend showed her shamelessly wowing the crowds on a front stoop at Bleecker Street and Sixth Avenue—soundly in the West Village! That day, I had travelled up the Hudson River to Sleepy Hollow or I would have rushed over there for the spectacle (and to add Wild Turkey as #116 on my West Village List.) The next pin dropped for her was Hudson and Leroy streets, clearly heading south, until she reached The Battery on May 1.

Seeing Astoria, strutting her iridescent, ruffled stuff, on the green lawn of The Battery, took me back to 2014 when another damsel turkey, Zelda, came to an untimely end of her celebrity reign there after 11 years of calling that green space home. I personally hope that Astoria gets up the gumption to take on that marathon flight to Staten Island and find herself a good ol’ two-timing Tom to call her own. She deserves it!

P.S.: While I was out planting my spring window boxes, a neighbor who lives down the block who I hadn’t seen in years, happened to walk by. After enthusiastic “hellos” she told me that, recently, an American Bittern had visited her backyard! My eyes must have bugged out, because I think that she thought that I hadn’t understood her, and I thought that I HAD understood her but my mind was racing through what other bird could have been mistaken for this distinctive, tall, comically lanky, brown-striped, elusive, heron-like marsh bird. An American Bittern is nearly impossible to find even where it’s supposed to be, much less the thousands-to-one chance of one dropping in on a private walled garden in the West Village! She repeated, “American Bittern.” I repeated, “Really, an American Bittern?” She asked, “You know what an American Bittern is?” “Yes, but…” She described it perfectly and relayed the saga of how it appeared in her garden, flew to another garden, returned, then left overnight. I asked, “Do you have any photos?” “Yes.” She said she’d send them to me. When the photos pinged in, the bird was, indeed, unbelievably, unmistakably, an American Bittern in her backyard on Perry Street. Who could’ve guessed that in the same week, a Wild Turkey and an American Bittern, two absolutely fantastic birds, would be dueling for the title of New West Village Bird #116? Just wait, and they will come.