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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend March 24, 2005 Downtown Medford gets some wild visitors By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune When Jen Wicker and Linda Chown stopped Tuesday at the Evelyn Apartments to inquire about an open residence there, they were startled to see what sort of pecking order had developed among those huddled at the "For Rent" sign. Ten wild turkeys putted and purred while pecking on the grass and adjacent foliage, acting like they own the place. "It’s kind of scary," says Chown, 46, of Medford. "We turn the corner and there’s all these wild turkeys right there. Will they attack us?" It’s the second time in three years — almost to the day — that a flock of normally wary wild turkeys have clucked and strutted their way through downtown Medford, with a stop at the Evelyn Apartments on North Ivy Street at the heart of their flight pattern. A flock of 15 female hens hop-scotched among downtown Medford rooftops on March 20, 2003, much to the amazement of biologists and downtown residents. Those birds eventually roosted on the Evelyn Apartments roof like feathery weather vanes, exactly like Tuesday’s flock did. Advertisement The difference this year is that these turkeys let gawkers within a few feet before slowly strolling away. And Tuesday’s turkeys were decisively more hike than flight. After strolling past the railroad tracks behind Porters restaurant on North Front Street, the turkeys picked their way west through a state-owned parking lot. The turkeys even shaded themselves for several minutes in the landscaping outside the Mail Tribune’s front door. That’s where Stan Smith of Jacksonville spotted them. He snapped a few photographs, then walked to the Fifth Street residence of a friend, David Herbst. The pair returned and the found the birds still there. "I walk by here all the time and I’ve never seen them," Herbst says. After munching a few berries and chatting amongst themselves with their muffled putts and purrs, the flock bobbed their heads and ambled west. They crossed several streets and negotiated parking lots and side-yards before settling in their old haunt. "They’ve come back to visit me," said apartment manager Alan Winters, 67. "I think it’s great. I’m sure it’s because they like the low rent and the nice lawn." The normally backwoods birds provided an unusual urban anomaly for lunchtime rubberneckers wondering first why all those people are looking on the apartment roof, then wondering if their eyes saw lies. "Wild turkeys on a roof in downtown Medford?" says Jim Killam of Medford. "What the heck are they doing here?" Just what brought these normal residents of rural oak savannas to the big city is a mystery to John Thiebes, a former Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who is now northwest field coordinator for the National Wild Turkey Federation. Wild turkeys have spread throughout the Rogue Valley since the first introduction of these birds 30 years ago. They have become nuisances in some neighborhoods around more rural neighborhoods, especially in Jacksonville and Gold Hill. But the often secretive birds just don’t pop up every day within a stone’s throw of a Greyhound station. In the case of urban wildlife, Thiebes says, all that wander normally are lost. Like the cow elk that meandered into the Rogue Valley Mall parking lot several years ago, most curious critters probably make their way into the heart of Medford by happenstance — usually via the Bear Creek corridor. "I’ve got no scientific answer for you," says Thiebes, of Medford. "They probably worked their way into town and they’ll work their way out of town. "Besides, you can never figure out what a turkey’s going to do from one day to the next," he says. Chown and Wicker certainly couldn’t figure out Tuesday what was going on in the bird-brains in front of them. No longer fearing attack, Chown and Wicker left without renting an apartment. But not before they watched the birds zip from the grass to their rooftop perch and marveled at this nature lesson two blocks from Main Street. "And they fly, too?" Chown says. "This is a trip." Thiebes says the turkeys’ trip to town a second time doesn’t quite make Medford the next avian San Juan Capistrano. "I think it’s a coincidence they showed up in the same place at the same time," Thiebes says. "But if the come around next year. ..." 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