Quebecers are used to seeing turkeys in the wild but in 2025 it’s becoming more and more common to spot them in many Montreal neighbourhoods.
Nathalie Jreidini, Director of Education at the Ecomuseum Zoo, says the sightings have come more frequent.
“We’ve seen they’re pretty adaptable to living in our backyards, front yards, on our streets, etc.,” said Ecomuseum Zoo education director Nathalie Jreidini.
She said foul (fowl?) weather may be part of the reason.
“We’ve had much milder winters and even our springs and summers have been relatively more dry, relatively warmer all year round,” she said. “What that leads to is less animals, including turkeys dying of natural consequences.”
From St. Leonard to Nuns’ Island, it’s now common to spot turkeys across Montreal, with some residents even naming the turkeys.
“There was Butters, the turkey, who appeared,” she local artist Kendra Boychuk, adding that she’s spotted the plucky poultry herself in NDG. “When you see it in the city, it’s kind of like seeing a dinosaur or seeing, I don’t know, an alien… Everybody stops, traffic stops.”
Butters was struck by a car and killed in 2021, but other turkeys have been spotted elsewhere roaming the streets.
The sightings have inspired Boychuk’s artwork.
“Once I started seeing them around myself a lot, that’s what I wanted to paint,” she said. “But it was [also] all the photos and the ridiculously funny videos that people posted.”
People began sharing glimpses of Butters on one of the borough’s Facebook pages. That inspired two of Kendra’s pieces and she’s even selling greeting cards, which sold out within a day.
“It’s just that juxtaposition of this wild animal just claiming its space back,” she said.
She said it reminds her that the animals were here first.
As tempting as it may be to care for the birds, Jreidini advises residents not to feed them.
“That’s dangerous for them based on what you give them as food, but also they will become less scared,” she said. “They’ll lose this natural instinct of fear of humans and they’ll come closer to you, which is why we see so many videos going viral.”
Viral videos include a tenacious turkey meeting a dog for the first time, with onlookers giggling off camera.
Whether it inspires a good laugh, a piece of artwork or a curiosity to learn more, Montrealers are gobbling it all up.
“Everybody is just watching them and kind of in awe and it kind of makes you happy and brings joy and kind of wonder,” says Boychuk.
