Wild Turkey

Male Wild Turkey

With Thanksgiving coming soon, this is a good time to take a look at the Wild Turkey, the popular holiday bird that once provided sustenance to both Native Americans and early American settlers.

While the Wild Turkey is not found in most of our backyards, it is a familiar bird. When learning about Pilgrims and Thanksgiving in grade school, how many of us drew the turkey with vividly colored tails? Depending on where you live, you may indeed have turkeys coming onto your property looking for food or nesting areas.

Wild Turkeys are large, dark colored ground-dwelling birds with long powerful legs, large fan-shaped tails and bare heads and necks. The male has breast feathers tipped with black. Its head and neck are a blue-gray and its wattles are pink. During spring display, the forehead is white, face bright blue and the neck scarlet. The female's breast feathers are tipped with brown, gray or white, the head tipped with brown, gray or white. The head has small feathers and, if present, the beard is small.

The Wild Turkey was a very important food to Native Americans, but overhunting for the dinner table eliminated it from much of its range by the early 1900s. Introduction programs have successfully established it in most of its original range, and introduced it in areas where the bird never lived before.

Female, at left, and male Wild Turkey

A native to North America, the Wild Turkey is one of only two domesticated birds originating in the New World. (The Muscovy Duck is the other.) In the wild, the turkeys are found in hardwood forests with open areas, as well as swamps, grasslands, ponderosa pine areas and chaparral.

The male with "gobble" to attract a female. He then struts around her with his tail fanned and held up vertically. He lowers his wings, raises the feathers on his back, throws his head back and inflates his crop. He will make occasional deep sounds followed by a "humm," all of which is accompanied by rapid vibration of his tail feathers.

Only the female is involved with raising the chicks. A small depression in dead leaves or vegetation on the ground is the "nest." Four to 17 eggs are laid and incubated for about 28 days. Poults are down-covered when hatched and are able to follow their mother. In a few days they are eating on their own. Turkeys feed on acorns, nuts, seeds, insects, fern fronds and salamanders.

Turkeys are strong fliers and can fly straight up and then away. During the night, they roost in trees. Their eyesight is three times better than a human's. Their hearing is excellent; they are able to hear another turkey a mile away.