Note: This is just the start of a new piece. But I figured it was time to write more stories from the Valley, as it's been awhile since I wrote about my daily adventures down there.

I could hear their yelps and purrs before I even rounded the red rocks, prowling forward as silently as I could with my camera at the ready for when I saw them. When just my eyes raised over the rim of the red rock, I counted three adult Merriam turkeys surrounded by fifteen to twenty flightless chicks. Almost all of them were closely gathered together on a trail that led up to the red rocks, taking turns fluffing their feathers and rolling around in the coarse red sand. The adult turkeys maintained blue and white heads and let their snoods hang low; they hadn’t yet noticed me creeping closer to them, taking shots of them with my camera as I did so. 

That was until the third hen, who’d wandered off into the grass away from the rest of the rafter, met eyes with me and sounded the alarm. With a series of yelps and chirps, the turkeys called their chicks to them, while holding their reddening heads and snoods high. All three adults turned to stare at me while their chicks skittered around at their feet, wondering what their parents were so alarmed about. 

Meanwhile, I stood stock still in the tall grass, waiting for the turkeys to either calm down or turn tail. After a moment of tension, the turkeys decided to go elsewhere, still aware of my presence but no longer panicked by it. As they moved northeast, the adults pecked at bugs on the ground while the little ones copied their parents or tried to roll around in the dust one last time, while I followed thirty yards behind them, taking pictures as I crept through the waist-high foliage in the shadow of God’s Ass. 

Among the red rock boulders, the turkeys dispersed. Two adults strutted over to a ripe hawthorn bush and began to gorge themselves on the berries, while they left the hen who called me out to babysit the majority of the chicks. The was, however, one adventurous little guy who found himself standing tall and proud on top of a red rock boulder. But when he saw me getting closer, he ran around the boulder till he found a place to safely jump off and flap his wings as he fell towards his parents, who were too busy snacking to notice the little guy faceplant next to them (he was okay).