The King Arrives

I traveled to Kerala last weekend. Will write about it in my next post. That morning when we started our drive to Kerala, we decided to have breakfast at a restaurant on the outskirts of Bangalore. That place has varieties of birds as pets, hens, turkeys, parrots.....

I decided to take few pictures of the turkeys and other birds. They are amazing birds, resilient and prolific. The Tom Turkey(male) has a bright red fleshy wattle which protrudes from its forehead.

I took few pictures when one of them was roaming around and later went near the cage where parrots were kept to take few pictures. I turned around to see a Tom Turkey in FULL PLUMAGE DISPLAY. It was strutting proudly, magnificent walk, in all glory with fanned tail and fluffed feathers. It was as if The King Arrived.

I was astonished and fascinated and immediately started clicking few pictures. But as I was clicking, I was constantly walking backwards as this bird was strutting towards me. It was a majestic sight. After a couple of minutes, I got really scared when it came close by. I thought its a strategy to scare foreign bodies and decided to leave it alone.

Just sometime back, i wanted to confirm if they were in full display to scare or was there some other reason. The real reason is this - The display is a MATING display. :-S They strut proudly for the hens, and the wattle turns a bright red during this mating display. Observe the picture again.

So did this creature think I WAS A HEN? And was he trying to seduce me??? :-S

Dear me!!