| from the August 22, 2004, 2004 Newsletter, issued from
near Natchez, Mississippi, USA: THREE TOM TURKEYS AT WANDER TIME Late Wednesday afternoon I'd gone into my trailer to check something in a book when I looked out my back window and saw three tom turkeys sauntering down the grassy road to the entrance, not ten feet away. Surely the turkeys' minds registered the strangeness of the barn with its open door, and my trailer with Beethoven playing on the radio, and the danger of being in an open area so close to the highway, but there they were. I hadn't realized what large, otherworldly birds Wild Turkeys really are. Surely when they stood erect their heads were three feet high! Being hot, they walked with their beaks open and held their dark feathers so close to their bodies that the feathers looked like scales. In fact, the first thought I had seeing them was that it was true what a paleontologist recently said -- that the dinosaurs never went extinct. It was just that the scales of some dinosaur species elaborated into feathers, and those dinosaurs evolved into birds. From the breasts of two of the birds arose slender, black, horsetail-like "beards" so long that they nearly touched the ground when the birds walked bent low, searching for grass seeds. The third had the beginning of a beard, about two inches long, which weirdly stuck straight out from its chest like a stiff, black finger. I read that "On the approach of the first winter the young males show a rudiment of the beard or fascicle of hairs on the breast, consisting of a mere tubercle, and attempt to strut and gobble; the second year the hairy tuft is about three inches long; in the third the turkey attains its full stature, although it certainly increases in size and beauty for several years longer." This suggests that I was seeing three male toms, two in their third year and another in its second. However, it isn't clear from what part of the country the author wrote the above, and maybe our birds grow beards on a different schedule. Another source says that females rarely grow beards, so maybe the short- bearded one was a female? Lots of information about Wild Turkey behavior is at http://birdsbybent.com/ch61-70/wturkey.html. from the February 29, 2004 Newsletter, issued from near
Natchez, Mississippi, USA: The gobbles seem to originate from two grassy clearings in the woods established for deer browsing. Hunters refer to such strutting locations as strut zones, and a tom might strut on as many as six of them. During the cold months the turkeys have kept together in flocks, but until lately I've not seen or heard a single one of them. That's something, because during the hot months just about every time I walk down to the pond I can count on seeing one or more hanging out on the grassy road between the woods and the Loblolly Field. Now that gobbling has begun, the flocks will fracture into individuals and small groups. In Mississippi, turkey hunting season is from March 20 to May 1. It's estimated that in our state we have about 294,000 Wild Turkeys, and last year 35-40,000 were killed. That means that, if you're a wild turkey in Mississippi, each year you stand about one in eight chances of getting shot. It also means that, taking the entire state as a whole, about 0.8 turkeys occur per square mile. from the June 24, 2001 Newsletter, issued from near
Natchez, Mississippi, USA: from the July 14, 2002 Newsletter, issued from near
Natchez, Mississippi, USA:
from the April 17, 2005 Newsletter, issued from
California's Sierra Nevada Foothills west of Sacramento: When I saw the turkey I recalled a map showing the species' original distribution and I was pretty sure that it had indicated that the bird was essentially an eastern North America species, but introduced in many areas outside its range. After a little Googling I found that the topic of "the Wild Turkey's original distribution" is a hot topic. If we say that its original distribution is what it was in Columbus's time, then most experts seem to agree that originally Wild Turkeys were not present in California. However, if we go back to the Ice Ages and before, then there's good evidence that California once had them. The turkeys I'm seeing now, however, result from introductions made by the California Department of Fish & Game. The question of whether Wild Turkeys are native or not is important. Wildlife managers use the rule of thumb that the introduction of a non-native species usually is bad because the local ecology didn't evolve to accommodate the species, while the reintroduction of an extirpated species usually is good because it adds diversity and stabilizes the local ecology by "filling in holes" in the local ecosystem's web of life. from the October 2, 2011 Newsletter issued from Mayan Beach Garden Inn 20 kms
north of Mahahual, Quintana Roo, México Glenn directed me to the Domesticated Turkey's Wikipedia page where I read the following:
No references were provided for the above story, plus I knew that the Aztecs didn't domesticate the turkey, since most of the turkey's domestication process took place centuries before the Aztec culture formed. Therefore, I need to confirm the story from other sources. It turned out that the Mexico --> Europe --> North America history is essentially true, plus I turned up a little extra information. First, Wild Turkeys in southern Mexico initially were domesticated not to be eaten, but for their feathers, which were used ceremonially and for feather robes and blankets. Also, the Anasazi of the US Southwest independently domesticated turkeys from a wild subspecies in their own area, but those birds -- both the wild and domesticated ones -- appear to have gone extinct. |