Wild turkey

Appearance

An adult male normally weighs from 5 to 11 kg and measures 100–125 cm in length. The adult female is typically much smaller at 2.5–5.4 kg and is 76 to 95 cm long. Per two large studies, the average weight of adult males is 7.6 kg and the average weight of adult females is 4.26 kg . The record-sized adult male wild turkey, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation, weighed 16.85 kg , with records of tom turkeys weighing over 13.8 kg uncommon but not rare. Considering its maximum and average weight, it is among the heaviest flying birds in the world.

The wings are relatively small, as is typical of the galliform order, and the wingspan ranges from 1.25 to 1.44 m . The wing chord is only 20 to 21.4 cm . The bill is also relatively small, as adults measure 2 to 3.2 cm in culmen length. The tarsus of the wild turkey is quite long and sturdy, measuring from 9.7 to 19.1 cm . The tail is also relatively long, ranging from 24.5 to 50.5 cm .

Fully-grown wild turkeys have long, reddish-yellow to grayish-green legs. Each foot has three front toes, with a shorter, rear-facing toe; males have a spur behind each of their lower legs, used to spar with other males.

The body feathers are generally blackish and dark, sometimes gray-brown, overall, with a coppery sheen that becomes more complex in older males. Mature males have a large, featherless, reddish head and red throat, with red wattles on the throat and neck. The head has fleshy, unique growths called caruncles, which may be used to identify certain birds from one another. When toms are excited, a fleshy flap on the bill expands, and this, the wattles and the bare skin of the head and neck all become red with enhanced flow of blood to the head. Tail feathers are of the same length in adults but of different lengths in juveniles.

Males have a long, dark, fan-shaped tail and glossy, bronze wings. As with many other species of Galliformes, turkeys exhibit strong sexual dimorphism. The male is substantially larger than the female, and his feathers have areas of red, purple, green, copper, bronze, and gold iridescence. The preen gland is also larger in males compared to females. In contrast to the majority of other birds, they are colonized by bacteria of unknown function . Males typically have at least one "beard", a tuft of coarse hair-like filaments , growing from the center of the breast. Beards grow continuously during the turkey's lifespan and a one-year-old male has a beard up to 5 in long. Approximately 10% of females have a beard, usually shorter and thinner than that of the male.

Females have feathers that are duller overall, in shades of brown and gray. Parasites can dull the coloration of both sexes; in males, vivid coloration may serve as a signal of health. The primary wing feathers have white bars. Turkeys have approximately 5,000 to 6,000 feathers. Juvenile males are called jakes; the difference between jakes and toms is that jakes have very short "beards" and tail fans with longer feathers in the middle. The tom's tail fan feathers are uniform in length.



The turkey has the second-highest maximum average weight of any North American bird, after the trumpeter swan . By average mass, however, several other American birds surpass the mean weight of the turkey, including the American white pelican , the tundra swan , the endangered California condor , and whooping crane .

Naming

Turkeys will occasionally forage with deer and squirrels, and may even play with them. By foraging together, each can help the other watch for predators with their different senses: the deer with their improved olfactory sense, the turkey with its superior sight, and squirrels providing an additional set of eyes from the air.There are subtle differences in the coloration, habitat, and behavior of the different subspecies of wild turkeys. The six subspecies are:

Distribution

The Californian turkey is an extinct species of turkey indigenous to the Pleistocene and early Holocene of California. It became extinct about 10,000 years ago. The present Californian wild turkey population derives from wild turkeys introduced to the region during the 1960s and 1970s from other areas by game officials. They proliferated after 2000 to become an everyday sight in the East Bay by 2015.

At the beginning of the 20th century the range and numbers of wild turkeys had plummeted due to overhunting and habitat loss. When Europeans arrived in the New World, they were found from the southeastern US to Mexico. Turkeys were first domesticated by native peoples in Mexico and brought back to Europe during colonization. European settlers brought domesticated turkeys to the northern portions of North America during the 17th century. Habitat loss and market hunting were major factors in the decline of wild populations for the next two centuries.

Game managers estimate that the entire population of wild turkeys in the United States was as low as 30,000 by the late 1930s. By the 1940s, it was almost totally extirpated from Canada and had become localized in pockets in the United States, in the north-east effectively restricted to the Appalachians, only as far north as central Pennsylvania. Early attempts used hand-reared birds, a practice that failed miserably as the birds were unable to survive in the wild at all and many had imprinted far too much on humans to effectively survive. Game officials later made efforts to protect and encourage the breeding of the surviving wild population. They would wait for numbers to grow, catch the surplus birds with a device that would have a projectile net that would ensnare the creature, move it to another unoccupied territory, and repeat the cycle. Over time this included some in the western states where it was not native. There is evidence that the bird does well when near farmland, which provides grain and also berry-bearing shrubs at its edges.: 368–379  As wild turkey numbers rebounded, hunting became legal in 49 U.S. states . In 1973, the total U.S. population was estimated to be 1.3 million, and current estimates place the entire wild turkey population at 7 million individuals. Since the 1980s, "trap and transfer" projects have reintroduced wild turkeys to several provinces of Canada as well, sometimes from across the border in the United States. They appear to be very successful as of 2018 as wild turkeys have multiplied rapidly and flourished in places where they were not expected to survive by Canadian scientists, often quite far north of their original expected range.

Attempts to introduce the wild turkey to Britain as a game bird in the 18th century were unsuccessful.These birds were imported from Mexico, then called the Spanish West Indies. They did not come from Turkey or India, as was widely believed. George II is said to have kept a flock of a few thousand in Richmond Park near London, but they were too easy for local poachers to steal, and the fights with poachers became too dangerous for the gamekeepers. They were hunted with dogs and then shot out of trees where they took refuge. Several other populations, introduced or escaped, have survived for periods elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, but seem to have died out, perhaps from a combination of lack of winter feed and poaching.: 363  Small populations, probably descended from farm as well as wild stock, in the Czech Republic and Germany have been more successful, and there are wild populations of some size following introductions in Hawaii and New Zealand.: 363–368 

Behavior

Males are polygamous, mating with as many hens as they can. Male wild turkeys display for females by puffing out their feathers, spreading out their tails, and dragging their wings. This behavior is most commonly referred to as strutting. Their heads and necks are colored with red, white, and blue. The color can change with the turkey's mood, with a solid white head and neck being the most excited. They use gobbling, drumming/booming, and spitting as signs of social dominance, and to attract females. Courtship begins during the months of March and April, which is when turkeys are still flocked together in winter areas.

Males may be seen courting in groups, often with the dominant male gobbling, spreading his tail feathers , drumming/booming, and spitting. In a study, the average dominant male that courted as part of a pair of males fathered six more eggs than males that courted alone. Genetic analysis of pairs of males courting together shows that they are close relatives, with half of their genetic material being identical. The theory behind team-courtship is that the less-dominant male has a greater chance of passing along shared genetic material than if he were courting alone.

When mating is finished, females search for nest sites. Nests are shallow dirt depressions engulfed with woody vegetation. Hens lay a clutch of 10–14 eggs, usually one per day. The eggs are incubated for at least 28 days. The poults are precocial and nidifugous, leaving the nest in about 12–24 hours. Turkeys are a ground nesting bird, and because of this they are heavily predated on; reproductively-active wild turkeys have a lower annual survival rate due to predation of nests.

Habitat

Wild turkeys prefer hardwood and mixed conifer-hardwood forests with scattered openings such as pastures, fields, orchards and seasonal marshes. They seemingly can adapt to virtually any dense native plant community as long as coverage and openings are widely available. Open, mature forest with a variety of interspersion of tree species appear to be preferred. In the Northeast of North America, turkeys are most profuse in hardwood timber of oak-hickory and forests of red oak , beech , cherry and white ash . Best ranges for turkeys in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont sections have an interspersion of clearings, farms, and plantations with preferred habitat along principal rivers and in cypress and tupelo swamps.

In the Appalachian Plateau and Cumberland Plateau birds occupy mixed forest of oaks and pines on southern and western slopes, also hickory with diverse understories. Bald cypress and sweet gum swamps of south Florida; also hardwood of ''Cliftonia'' and oak in north-central Florida. Lykes Fisheating Creek area of south Florida has up to 51% cypress, 12% hardwood hammocks, 17% glades of short grasses with isolated live oak ; nesting in neighboring prairies. Original habitat here was mainly longleaf pine with turkey oak and slash pine "flatwoods", now mainly replaced by slash pine plantations.

In California, turkeys live in a wide range of habitats; acorns are a favorite food, in addition to wild oats , drawing turkeys to areas of open oak forest and oak savanna across the central areas of the state. They frequent the lower-elevation oak woodlands of the Sierra Nevada foothills and Coast Ranges, and the central coast north through Mendocino County, which is primarily open conifer forest with various species of ferns growing in the understory. They can also be found in the conifer foothills and fern-heavy forested areas of the Klamath Mountains and Cascade Range in the northern areas of the state. In San Diego County, turkeys tend to be found farther from the coast, usually a minimum of 30–50 miles inland, at reasonably higher elevation; there is a healthy turkey population inhabiting the montane conifer woods and open oak forest habitats of the Cleveland National Forest, a region which borders on high desert and generally receives very minimal annual precipitation. Turkeys in these areas can be found in dense thickets of manzanita , often growing on arid hillsides, for shelter and nesting sites, as well as rocky and boulder-strewn chaparral foothills.

Predators

Predators of eggs and nestlings include raccoons , Virginia opossums , striped skunks , spotted skunks , red foxes , gray foxes , groundhogs , among other rodents. Predators of poults in addition to nestlings and eggs also include several species of snake, namely rat snakes , gopher snakes , and pinesnakes .

Avian predators of poults include raptors such as bald eagles , barred owl , red-shouldered , red-tailed , white-tailed , Harris's hawks , Cooper's hawk , and broad-winged hawk . Mortality of poults is greatest in the first 14 days of life, especially of those roosting on the ground, decreasing most notably after half a year, when they attain near adult sizes.


In addition to poults, hens and adult-sized fledglings are vulnerable to predation by great horned owls , American goshawk , domestic dogs , domestic cats , and red foxes . Predators of both adults and poults include coyotes , gray wolves , bobcats , cougars , Canada lynx '','' golden eagles , and possibly American black bears , which also will eat the eggs if they find them. The American alligator is a predator to all turkeys of all ages in the Southeast and will eat them if they get too close to water. Humans are now the leading predator of adult turkeys. When approached by potential predators, turkeys and their poults usually run rather than fly away, though they may also fly short distances if pressed. Another alternative behaviour, common in Galliformes, is that when surprised with no time to flee, the poulets hide under the wings and body of the hen while she sits tight and still. Presumably, the hen has vocal and behavioural signals that trigger the poults to instinctively run to the hen for cover.

Occasionally, if cornered, adult turkeys may try to fight off predators and large male toms can be especially aggressive in self-defense. When fighting off predators, turkeys may kick with their legs, using the spurs on their back of the legs as a weapon, bite with their beak, and ram with their relatively large bodies and may be able to deter predators up to the size of mid-sized mammals. Hens have been observed chasing off at least two species of hawks in flight when their poults are threatened.

Wild turkeys are not usually aggressive towards humans, but can be frightened or provoked to behave with aggression. They are most likely to attack if startled, cornered, harassed, or if approached too closely. Attacks and potential injuries can usually be avoided by giving wild turkeys a respectful amount of space and keeping outdoor spaces clean and undisturbed. Also, turkeys that are habituated to seeing people, at places like parks or campgrounds, can be tame and will even feed from the hands of people. Male toms occasionally will attack parked cars and reflective surfaces, thinking they see another turkey and must defend their territory.