 Tick's Worst Nightmare: Eastern Wild Turkey
Noted In Nature
HD EVERY TICK'S WORST NIGHTMARE
BY Bill Heald
Bill Heald of Hampton is a regular Northeast contributor.
10 October 2004
The Hartford Courant SC . All Rights Reserved.
Time passes faster as you get older, which I think Albert Einstein would hav
e
explained mathematically had he lived a bit longer. I mention the calendar's
rapid passage because I've noticed that the peak tick season is over, and I
don't remember even having a peak tick season. Not that I worry about the
bloodsucking, disease-spreading terror bugs you understand, but I was curiou
s
as to where the heck they were this year. Did they flee south to check out t
he
17-year cicadas? TD I freely admit I'm no tick expert, other than having de
alt
with them quite a bit since we live on land that is thick with trees. As for
my
declaration that they were far fewer this season, I didn't arrive at this
conclusion through careful, scientific field sampling. I reached this view
through careful, nonscientific dog-coat maintenance. We have three canines,
and
their coats range from reasonably short hair (Rottweiler) to a semi-lush for
est
of follicles (German shepherd). In the past, all three have been walking
magnets for ticks, despite the use of the latest chemical toxins to both rep
el
and kill crawling pests. But this year was different. What gives? At first
I
thought it could be the weather, but that's a complex explanation when it co
mes
to ticks because of their biennial lifestyle. ``Some factors, given the
2-year life cycle, can influence a current year's population from two years
or
more before,'' explains Kirby C. Stafford III, chief scientist with the
department of forestry and horticulture at the Connecticut Agricultural
Experiment Station. ``These may include weather, as a correlation has been
found with the June moisture or drought index from two years previously, and
with acorns, which influence mouse and deer populations, etc.'' That's all
well and good, but a friend in Woodstock mentioned an entirely different rea
son
for the dearth of ticks on our dogs: predation. At first I expected she mean
t
some kind of microscopic mite or a strain of Lyme disease that actually
decimates the ticks themselves, thus saving the human population from the
hideous affliction. But no. Our friend said a huge, goofy looking bird was
slaughtering ticks by the acre. ``Have you had a lot of turkeys on your
property the last few months?'' she asked. ``They eat ticks.'' Holy nearly
flightless main course, Batman! Our very own Eastern Wild Turkey (Meleagris
gallopavo silvestris) is a tick exterminator? Is this possible? Herein lie
s a
bit of a controversy. Turkeys are opportunistic eaters, but they do have a
taste for small, crawling things like ticks (especially young turkeys, who l
ove
the tiny, eight-legged vampires). They are superb foragers, for turkeys have
great hearing and can hear approaching foes (or ticks coughing) from a great
distance. Some biologists feel a turkey's eyesight may be three times better
than ours, so finding ticks amongst the shrubbery is a piece of cake. The bi
g
guys can also briefly fly at 50 mph, whereas ticks can't fly at all unless
aided by a leaf blower at close range. Now, you know that no matter how
hungry a turkey might be, you would need a lot of them to do any real damage
to
the tick population. As it turns out, they are quite prolific. A clutch of
young poults (you talk turkey, right?) typically numbers nine to 15. These
young turks tend to stay with their Mum for nearly a year, and families tend
to
congregate in flocks. I've seen groups of 25 in our yard, but I'm told a flo
ck
can be two to three times that size. With numbers like these, and given th
at
a flock can cover several square miles of roaming and tick gobbling a day, t
hey
can actually make a difference, right? Amazingly, not much work has been don
e
on the subject, but there was one paper published in 1999, ``Experimental
studies of interactions between wild turkeys and black-legged ticks'' by R.S
.
Ostfeld and D.N. Lewis in New York. ``The authors concluded that turkey
foraging is unlikely to reduce the local density of adult ticks,'' explains
Stafford. He did offer the following caveat: ``The study does not address
predation on larger, engorged female ticks that have dropped off a host to t
he
ground.'' Oh fine. I would also like to point out that this study wasn't
conducted on my property, either, and therefore I am not convinced. I will
further point out that turkeys not only eat ticks, ticks apparently like to
return the favor and have been known to use the turkey as a host. I postulat
e
that this, too, keeps them off our dogs, reducing the free-roaming tick
population (the flypaper theory, if you will). Is this possible? It was time
to
get the opinion of someone with a long, impressive title as to whether there
could be a ``connection'' between ticks and turkeys. `I certainly think th
ere
might be a `connection,''' replied William L. Krinsky, associate clinical
professor of epidemiology and public health and a faculty affiliate in
entomology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University.
``Ground-dwelling birds are very susceptible to infestation with the immatur
e
stages of the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis, the vector of the Lyme
disease spirochete.'' There you go. Of course, even if my theory is right,
the turkey will never get a tick-removal reputation as formidable as the gui
nea
fowl. These trendy pheasant-like birds have even managed their way onto the
pages of The New York Times and an appearance on the Rosie O'Donnell Show. T
he
bird in question (the fowl, not Rosie) apparently is great at nailing ticks
in
small yards, where they patrol the patch like chickens. But to me, they wi
ll
never have the appeal of the tough, rugged Eastern Wild Turkey. I decided to
ask one last tick expert, point blank, if turkeys could be our saviors, desp
ite
the other evidence. ``There are normal seasonal and annual variations in
populations of ticks that are caused by many factors,'' explained Louis A.
Magnarelli, our state entomologist and director of the Connecticut Agricultu
ral
Experiment Station. ``In my opinion, it would be a stretch to say that turke
ys
are controlling ticks or are responsible for low populations of ticks.''
Those are the words of a tick expert. I, on the other hand, say this: If you
regularly have a large turkey flock roaming your property, there are probabl
y
fewer ticks than there would be otherwise. Regardless of this, Stafford
believes the best control is simply fencing out deer from large properties.
I
have no data on how many deer are taken out by dive-bombing wild turkeys, bu
t
this might be worth looking into as well. Physical and biological controls a
re
always safer than pesticides. In closing, I wish to state that pigs eat
rattlesnakes. A friend in Montana told me that. In Connecticut, we have far
more porkers than timber rattlers, too. Coincidence? I don't think so. ART
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h
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