The distinction matters, a little. Wild turkeys are not small — a tom can run fifteen pounds, and the ones colonizing Alameda's office parks and residential streets have lost most of their wariness toward humans — but they are also not raptors. What they are is persistent, territorial during mating season, and apparently unbothered by the presence of a city around them.

Alameda's animal control, operating under the Alameda Police Department, confirmed to the local press that it cannot remove the birds. Wild turkeys are classified as Resident Upland Game Bird under California Fish and Game Code, managed by the Fish and Game Commission, which means the city's options are essentially advisory: don't feed them, assert yourself if they approach, carry something that makes noise. The police, when called after the incident, had nothing to offer either.

Residents near the commercial stretch along the waterfront have been watching the flocks grow more visible through the spring — toms fanning out on parking lot medians, hens moving poults across crosswalks with no particular urgency. One commenter on the Bay Area subreddit mentioned seeing a mother with two young turkeys crossing the street near their office just last week, and described the adult males as spending the past month or two puffing up and showing off at passersby.

For now, the city's posture is one of coexistence, which is another way of saying the turkeys are not going anywhere.

Anyone walking that stretch of Alameda tomorrow will see what residents have been navigating for weeks: a flock moving through a space it has decided, without consultation, to share.