For nearly two weeks, a wild turkey has been roaming the grounds of Fishtown's Palmer Cemetery and alighting on the rooftops of nearby rowhomes. Some mornings it can be heard gobbling at sunrise.
Nobody knows exactly where the turkey came from or how long it will stay, but the wayward bird has become a minor celebrity on social media. One Fishtown neighborhood Facebook group has had a steady stream of photos and videos of the turkey meandering around the cemetery. Fans of the bird have been calling it Palmer and Cluck Norris, among other nicknames.
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"Being woken up by the sounds of a turkey gobble is a new experience," one Fishtown resident wrote, along with sharing a photo of the turkey atop a neighbor's home at Memphis Street and East Montgomery Avenue, just outside the cemetery grounds.
Mary Jo Casalena, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's turkey biologist, took one look at a photo of the bird and immediately knew it was a male – called a Jake – that hatched last year. Female wild turkeys are called Jennies.
"I can tell from the length of his beard," Casalena said. "He's got a tiny little beard sticking out from his chest."
Compared to the domestic turkeys eaten at Thanksgiving, wild turkeys are slimmer and have darker meat. They're a game bird that can be hunted during periods in the spring and fall in Pennsylvania, which was home to about 159,000 wild turkeys as of the state's last count in 2021. Since their numbers have been declining, Casalena and her colleagues have programs to monitor them and strategize to help the species repopulate.
Urban areas like Philadelphia are not common or suitable habitats for wild turkeys, but the time of year could help explain why this one ended up on its own in Fishtown.
Fishtown turkey
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During winter, Casalena said males and females tend to stick together in brood flocks with their hens. Then as spring approaches, the males split off into their own flocks to establish a breeding ground and create a pecking order. Some of the males may become solitary, especially if they can't hang with the older turkeys.
"Being that this guy is a juvenile, he's subordinate to the 2-year and older males – so he just keeps getting pushed," Casalena said. "We see this a lot. The young males will just kind of get pushed around, and then sometimes they'll just go on these journeys to find a new area."
Turkey is 'allowed to be there'
Casalena believes the Fishtown turkey likely made his way to Philly from somewhere along the Delaware River, where wild turkeys have nesting grounds in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Some suburban parts of New Jersey are periodically overrun with flocks of wild turkeys in the fall, requiring wildlife officials to capture and relocate them.
They may not look especially spry, but wild turkeys are capable of quick bursts of flight. They often run, jump and then flap up into the branches of their roosting trees, and some can travel up to a quarter of a mile in the air. To get a runway and cover more ground, they may pitch themselves off hillsides.
"We've had birds that have been leg-banded that will show up in the harvest over 20 miles away," Casalena said. "They fly across the Delaware River readily. Some of our hens that we have transmitters on that we caught in Pennsylvania, they've flown over to New Jersey to nest. They prefer to be terrestrial."
Earlier in March, after a Fishtown resident called the city's Animal Care and Control Team, staff was sent to Palmer Cemetery to check on the turkey. ACCT found no reason to try to trap it.
"It's allowed to be there," an ACCT dispatcher said in an email. "Our officers were out ... but (the animal is) fine, (and) we'd only remove it if it was sick or severely injured."
Casalena said it wouldn't be easy to capture the bird alive.
"It would be a futile exercise. They're just fast," she said. "They're a prey species. They're very wary of their surroundings, and since this is a healthy bird, he won't let anybody get close enough to throw a net over him. He might allow you to get close, but there's definitely a distance that if you go closer, I'm sure he'd take off in a heartbeat."
There were no signs of the turkey Wednesday morning at Palmer Cemetery, a 5-acre area once known as the Kensington Burial Ground near Belgrade and East Palmer streets. These days, a group of volunteers maintain the grounds and keep it open to the public. It's mainly used for cremation burials.
Palmer Cemetery, which dates back to the 1730s, is the final resting place for generations of Fishtown and Kensington residents, including many who fought in the Civil War. It's one of the oldest community cemeteries in Philadelphia, and it received historic designation from the city in 1960. A historical marker at the entrance notes that Anthony Palmer, the founder of Kensington and the graveyard's namesake, was a merchant and acting governor of colonial Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s. He collaborated with Benjamin Franklin to protect the colony from raiding privateers.
Jim Kingsmill, Palmer Cemetery's president and a trustee for the last 14 years, said he's had fun with the neighborhood's interest in the bird. He was told about the wild turkey earlier this month when a friend reached out after seeing it during a visit at a gravesite.
"I've seen it around a bunch and have gotten info from a lot of people who are curious about it," Kingsmill said. "It comes and goes. Some think it may have been domesticated before coming here."
Another volunteer at the graveyard on Wednesday said the turkey "acts like he owns the place" and pointed out a tree where the bird roosts.
Kingsmill isn't too concerned about the turkey spending time on the grounds. He's seen raccoons, a hawk that frequents the property's trees and a stray cat that strolls through to prey on field mice. Palmer Cemetery has had much more unusual occurrences during his time as a volunteer. Kingsmill recalled about five years ago when a group brought in a goat overnight and beheaded it near a headstone in an apparent a ritual sacrifice.
"I saw the goat's head the next morning, and I had to call 911 to have police sent over before animal control came to remove it," he said. "I thought it was Santeria. Police said it could have been satanic. That kind of thing happens at other cemeteries, too."
Kingsmill hopes the attention the turkey is getting from the neighborhood will inspire neighbors to pitch in to support projects at the cemetery. Many of the cemetery's trees are dying – falling branches have crushed four cars over the years – and Kingsmill said he's working with an arborist to have some removed and new ones planted in the fall.
Turkey's best hope
The turkey in Fishtown likely took refuge in Palmer Cemetery because it's a safe space away from streets, and its soil is ideal for finding grubs and earthworms, the game commission's Casalena said. The turkey is likely flying onto rooftops to see if it can scope out other green spaces.
"That's the difficulty when you have wildlife in urban areas because they don't know where they're going," Caselena said. "The importance for him is to find a stream or natural corridor to follow where he can find other birds or return to the river. They try to find some kind of natural course."
Casalena is studying the nesting habits of turkey hens with researchers at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. The state hopes to stabilize or increase its population of wild turkeys, and the results of the study could provide insights about how the game commission can customize its management tactics to different parts of the state.
In Fishtown, Casalena said the turkey's morning gobbling will most likely start about 20 minutes before sunrise and may last for up to 30 minutes after the sun is up. She urges people to avoid feeding the turkey, since he likely has plenty of berries, seeds nuts and other food sources to keep him healthy.
"The more that he's encouraged to stay there, then the more dangerous it is because he doesn't have a future in Philadelphia," she said. "There's no mate for him."
Casalena expects that the turkey's instincts will kick in, and he'll set out to be reunited with his kind.
"He needs to just continue on his adventure," she said. "I really hope this guy figures out where to go."