\n Astoria\u2019s move was likely motivated by a biological imperative she may never fulfill. Across New York Harbor, on Staten Island, there are hundreds of turkeys. But they can hardly fly more than a few hundred feet in one burst, let alone the 5 miles between the boroughs, and Astoria hasn\u2019t yet figured out the ferries.\n <\/p>\n
\n Astoria may never find a mate if she stays at the Battery. But her many human admirers hope she never leaves.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI think she\u2019s really found her home,\u201d said Stella Hamilton, a local birder who spends hours every day with Astoria.\n <\/p>\n
\n Astoria, with her curious expression, iridescent plumage and striking strut, is easy to love.\n <\/p>\n
\n Hamilton has spent decades getting acquainted with celebrity birds around the city, including the long-lived red-tailed hawk Pale Male<\/a> and Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who survived for a year on the loose after his enclosure at Central Park Zoo was sabotaged, then died<\/a> in February of last year. She was still mourning Flaco when she heard about the lonely turkey living on Roosevelt Island. It wasn\u2019t until Astoria took a daring flight across the East River and landed in the haughty Sutton Place neighborhood that Hamilton finally sought her out.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe first time I saw her sitting on that balcony in the east 50s, in Sutton Place, I fell in love right away,\u201d Hamilton said.\n <\/p>\n \n The pair have since established a nighttime routine. (Another birder spends time with Astoria every morning.) Hamilton arrives at the Battery every day around 3 p.m. and stays until the bird is safely nestled in her oak tree for bed. She gently reprimands children who attempt to grab Astoria, shoos away unleashed dogs that chase her and feeds her unsalted peanuts by hand.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cGrown men will talk nonsense, like, \u2018You\u2019ll be dead next month,\u2019 \u2018Who\u2019s hungry,\u2019 that kind of talk. It\u2019s just so offensive that people could see her as food to eat,\u201d said Hamilton, a vegetarian.\n <\/p>\n \n But most of the people who pass through the Battery are unfazed by Astoria\u2019s presence.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMany of the tourists are much more interested in the squirrel,\u201d said Sean Kiely, the Battery\u2019s park manager.\n <\/p>\n \n If she\u2019s not prowling the park, you might even miss her. Astoria doesn\u2019t mind most human passersby, but she does not abide rats. She spends most of her days foraging for worms and weeds in garden beds or strutting through the park\u2019s meadows. Every night, around sunset, she revs up to roost in a tall oak tree by pacing the sidewalk and then suddenly breaking into a sprint to get aloft.\n <\/p>\n \n Hamilton gushes about Astoria the way someone might about their child or a crush: \u201cShe\u2019s really very sweet, kind of comical. Her radiance \u2014 her feathers are beaming, especially when the sunset hits her feathers. She\u2019s just really glorious.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n On Staten Island, where turkey populations<\/a> have exploded<\/a> in the last 15 years, the birds are considered by some to be nuisances, what with their plentiful poop and potential for aggression during mating season. At the Battery, Astoria assists with landscaping.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe\u2019s helping the gardeners out, and she knew exactly what she wanted to eat and helped us get rid of the actual weeds and left the flowers alone,\u201d Kiely said of Astoria\u2019s meals around the dandelion beds. \u201cI thought that was pretty amazing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Along with the peanuts, Hamilton feeds Astoria blueberries when they\u2019re in season. Prolific birder David Barrett maintains that feeding Astoria some supplementary snacks is \u201cnecessary\u201d so she can access the same nutrition her fellow wild turkeys get outside the city, with the peanuts filling in for acorns. But city wildlife officials discourage<\/a> people from feeding wild turkeys, which could lead the birds to lose their natural fear of humans. Astoria is already in close contact with people, and if she approaches park visitors who perhaps are not huge fowl fans, the results could be disastrous.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI know it\u2019s very tempting to want to feed large animals like turkeys,\u201d said Sunny Corrao, who works on human-wildlife relations for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. \u201cBut Battery Park has some really well-landscaped garden beds. There\u2019s still insects. They\u2019ll be eating seeds in the winter. So this turkey\u2019s got plenty of food.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Astoria\u2019s arrival in Manhattan remains puzzling because no one knows quite where she came from. She was first spotted in her eponymous neighborhood in Queens in 2024 before decamping to idyllic Roosevelt Island, that skinny strip of parks and apartment towers in the middle of the East River. But she definitely didn\u2019t hatch in Queens, where there are no wild turkeys, said Barrett, who runs the popular X account Manhattan Bird Alert, where he documents the goings-on of local avian celebrities. There are some wild turkey flocks off in the far reaches of the Bronx or 30 miles further east on Long Island, but it\u2019s unlikely that Astoria traveled that far.\n <\/p>\n \n Wherever it was that she emerged from the egg, Astoria probably dispersed from her hatchplace to avoid competition with other birds, said Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Wild turkey populations have surged<\/a> countrywide after decades of work to restore their numbers, especially in New York State, where halfway through the 20th century the species had all but disappeared. The once-reclusive birds have learned to adapt to human development, and many wild turkey populations now live comfortably in cities with plenty of interconnected green spaces and forested areas, Farnsworth said.\n <\/p>\n \n The Battery offers easy access to Wall Street and the 9\/11 Memorial, rather than to other green spaces. That aside, though, it has a lot of what Astoria requires: wooded habitats, plenty of food sources, access to open spaces and hiding places. But there\u2019s also traffic, pesticides and other harmful chemicals and rats, cats and dogs to contend with. Her survival is impressive, Farnsworth said.\n <\/p>\n \n What the Battery does not have is a male turkey with which she can mate.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019d suspect the prospects are not good,\u201d Farnsworth said.\n <\/p>\n \n But there is a precedent for bachelorette turkeys settling down at the Battery. Before Astoria was Zelda, a single hen named for F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s flighty wife, who lived at the park for 10 years \u2014 more than double the average lifespan of a wild turkey. She may\u2019ve lived even longer if she hadn\u2019t been fatally struck by a truck in 2014.\n <\/p>\n \n Like the eternally single Zelda, Astoria has laid eggs (unfertilized, of course) in a nest on the ground and refused to abandon them for days at a time, putting her in danger of starvation and at risk of predation from unleashed dogs. Kiely and his team of gardeners have a system in place, from their days with Zelda, for distracting Astoria and carefully removing the eggs.\n <\/p>\n![\"Astoria](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2211041170.jpg\")
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