Stories from the road, amazing images of a Wild Turkey and Eastern Meadowlark
By Dan Jordan, pictured is a recent close encounter with a Cooper’s Hawk
I retired from the daily routine of the 9-5 world and became a full-time wildlife photographer just two years ago. As such, I have the pleasure of traveling about the country in search of unique species, dramatic backdrops, and interactions between animals or between various species and me.
Travel is great for me as I love to drive. I even bought an off-road beast of a vehicle to support my need to “get out there”. Traveling the country provides me with awesome opportunities, yes, but I find that our local region, encompassing WNY and NWPA, is rich in wildlife and photographic opportunities in its own right. Moreso than I once would have believed, I capture some incredible images within a hundred-mile radius of my home in Allegany, NY. Bald eagle photography is my specialty, and many of my bald eagle images are captured within a couple of miles of home.
In this series of articles, I will share images and stories which originate from within that 100-mile radius (plus or minus) and perhaps encourage the readers to “get out there” yourselves to see firsthand what nature has to offer us right here at home.
To that end, my first anecdote involves a recent trip to Presque Isle State Park, near Erie, PA (right about at that hundred-mile boundary). I drove to PISP in search of the elusive snowy owl, which I did not locate. As I traversed the park, I spotted a wild turkey on a road. I carefully approached, hoping to capture some closeup images. Little did I know………
A little history is in order before I continue this tale. I have had some unique and closeup interactions with wildlife in the last few years. Turkeys (and other species) seem unphased by my presence at times. I’ve had a whole flock of Benjamin Franklin’s candidate for our national bird walk with me down a trail, completely surrounding me. I’ve had a tom turkey peck my lens, apparently asking me for a portrait. Wild, weird stuff, and I am at a loss to explain any of this.
Anyhow, as I approached the turkey at PISP, it came running up to my Bronco. I eased ahead in an attempt to ‘get ahead’ of the bird so I could get out and get eye level photos. The turkey would have none of it. It ran alongside the Bronco at whatever speed I was moving. When I stopped, the turkey would stand on it tippy toes, stretch out its neck, and look inside of my vehicle. I was never able to get out of the vehicle, out of fear, mostly. Turkeys are big birds and visions of the viral video I have watched of a postal worker being ‘attacked’ by turkeys were lurking in my brain.
Thankfully, I carry multiple lenses when I am out on a wildlife outing. Capturing an image of a turkey poking its head through the window of my Bronco required me to lean back toward the passenger seat as far as I could lean and use the widest lens I had. The result was this image. I doubt that I will ever get that close to a turkey beak again, frankly I hope not, as this experience was a bit off putting, if not downright scary.
Someone told me that I was so close that I could have counted the hairs on its head. Indeed, I could have but did not.
I also captured image of the turkey running alongside of me as I attempted to drive off and leave. It’s not nearly as dramatic or as sharp as the closeup image, but it shows the turkey ‘clucking’ at me as it ran. (Sounded very much like a chicken clucking) My vehicle was moving, the turkey was running and bobbing its head as it did so, and I was holding the camera outside the window in one hand. These factors conspired to make a blurry image. I am quite surprised that the photo is as sharp as it is, frankly.
Most of my image and wildlife stories involve bald eagles or other species of birds, hence the name of this column. I certainly do not limit myself to bird species, but the opportunities to capture birds exceed those of other sorts of animals.
I’ll share another quick story with you in this article. I had photographed a western meadowlark in Utah a couple of years ago but had never seen an eastern meadowlark. Last summer, I was offered access to property where they had been sighted but never saw one. I vowed to photograph one before the year ended.
A few weeks later, I saw two of them in the Town of Allegany, within a couple of week period. The first was exciting, but the second involved yet another funny ‘story’. I was driving from my home toward Olean on the back road route (a given for me!). I spotted a meadowlark on a wire but there was nowhere to pull off the road. So, as I quite often am known to do, I bailed into the ditch to avoid blocking traffic. Not worrying about how to get out of the ditch is my normal “worry about that detail later” way of dealing with wildlife opportunities (and the reason I bought the Bronco).
As I photographed the meadowlark, who drives down the road toward me, but my wife. Seeing my vehicle tilted at an odd angle in a ditch, the only response was to shake her head as she drove by. Not worried that I had crashed, or how I might extricate myself from the mess I was in, she knew, instinctively, that I had driven into the ditch on purpose.
Anyway, I captured some great images of the magnificent eastern meadowlark, which had eluded me for my entire life until 2024. Here is one of the images from that encounter.
I normally don’t like to include manmade objects in my wildlife photos but given my long drought in finding an eastern meadowlark, I am happy to share this image of a bird on a wire. And for those of you concerned if I got out of the ditch, yes both my vehicle and I survived to photograph another day.
I plan to submit more in this series of anecdotes of my local wildlife encounters in the future. If you have any questions or comments for me, or even suggestions, I can be reached at dan@jordanphotog.com. Thank you for your interest in my work.
