Rio Grande Wilid Turkey puffing out his feathers. U.S. FWS photo by Robert Burton.

Original wild turkey distribution in North America (image via Wikimedia).

Turkeys are the largest member of the grouse family and they are the second largest wild bird in North America (after Trumpeter swans).  Males weigh 11-24 lbs and females 5-12 lbs. Like many sexually dimorphic species, males are selected for maximum sex appeal while females are more sensibly selected to be the right size to glean food from their environment and escape predators.  Males can get away with being larger than females as they leave all the rearing of the chicks (poults) to the hens and are not a part of family flocks.

A flock of wild turkey, captured by the author as they strolled by. NWF photo by Sterling Miller.

Where I live in western Montana, wild turkeys were introduced about 10 years ago in the upper Bitterroot Valley near Hamilton, Montana. I believe that wild turkeys did not originally occur in western Montana as I’ve found no reference to them in the Journals of Lewis and Clark. About 5 years after their introduction in the Upper Bitterroot Valley, we were excited to see them at our place about 50 miles south.  We’ve been seeing them regularly ever sense.  I took the pictures here last fall when a flock of 17 birds (including 2 adult hens and 15 poults) strolled by. This appeared to be a combined family as the normal clutch has 10-12 eggs. The open clearing and pasture lands created by humans where forests used to grow creates favorable habitat for wild turkeys.

Benjamin Franklin praised the wild turkey and dissed our national bird, the bald eagle, as being “a Bird of bad moral charcter….[who] does not get his living honestly.” I suppose this criticism stems from the fact that smaller birds attack eagles with impunity and eagles steal food from Osprey and other birds. Franklin contrasted the bald eagle with the turkey,

“…a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America….Though a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

No doubt Franklin’s perception of turkey’s as “vain” reflects the male bird’s strutting behavior during breeding season.  Courtship displays like this, however, are common in many birds and other animals and serve a vital purpose in allowing females to choose the best available mate to father their offspring.  Franklin, himself, was known to dress up to impress the ladies and this is no different in intent or function from what many wildlife species, including turkeys, do.

Today, the term “turkey” has come to mean different things including “a stupid, foolish, or inept person.” However, this definition must refer to domestic turkeys and not the the canny wild turkey.   While the turkey on your Thanksgiving table is very different from the wild turkey, this success story is one I encourage a share this holiday season.

What wild animal or plant are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? Let us know in the comments below!

In keeping with the theme, I of course brought on a wild turkey.  I wanted to show viewers the wild version of the domestic bird that is the centerpiece of the holiday.   As you’ll see when you watch the clip below, the turkey flew up to the table to get the spotlight but was unfortunately (for me) upstaged by an incontinent baby beaver.   You can’t plan this stuff, folks.

Needless to say, it was a fun, whacky segment with Kathie Lee and Hoda (it always is) and I was able to share facts about some great North American wildlife and also to promote NWF’s new Choose Your Cause campaign.

From the NWF family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fish and Wildlife Service

1. Origin of the Name

The bird really is named after the nation of Turkey.  Early European visitors to the Americas saw the creature and it reminded them of a bird familiar to them back home known as a “Turkey bird.”  It seems that the African guinea fowl made it to Europe in the Middle Ages via Turkey and the similarity to the American bird gave rise to the same name being applied.

2. Other Turkey Tags

Adult male turkeys are called toms and females are called hens. Very young birds are poults and adolescents are called jakes.

3. Patriotic Heads

The wild turkey’s bald head can change color in seconds with excitement or emotion. The birds’ heads can be red, (pink) white or blue.

4. Loud and Fast

Turkeys’ gobbles can be heard a mile or more away and they are fast on their feet with a top running speed of about 25 miles per hour or about the same as a human track star.

5. Quick from the Nest

A young poult is up, out of the nest and walking around searching for food within an incredibly rapid 24 hours.  Turkeys have been known to lay as many as 18 eggs in a clutch so maybe a fast exit is simply to beat the crowd.

6. Arboreal

Wild turkeys sleep in trees.  The birds are usually seen walking so many people are surprised they even fly.  Though they only fly for short distances, they are speedy and hit about 55 miles per hour when going full tilt.

7. Courting

Tom turkeys show courting behaviors much like the peacock with displays of their tails.  Males also use other of their birdlike “junk” to attract hens including a bright snood on top of their beaks and a wiggling wattle under their beaks.

8.  Five Subspecies

Wild turkeys include Eastern, Osceola, Rio Grande, Merriam’s and Gould’s subspecies. There are subtle plumage differences and different ranges that distinguish the birds.

9. A Turkey Group

A group of turkeys — has many awesome and unusual descriptive nouns, including a “crop”, “dole”, “gang”, “posse”, and “raffle.”

10. Viva Mexico

Domesticated turkeys took a circuitous route to America’s dinner tables.  Wild turkeys were first domesticated in Mexico and then exported to Europe only to come back here later.

11. Presidential Pardons

It is said that the first presidential pardon ever given was by Harry Truman in 1947 and it was given to a turkey.  It spurred an annual tradition of allowing two turkeys (one for the Prez and one for the Veep) to be spared each Thanksgiving. In looking into where these spared birds end up, it turns out that some have been taken to Frying Pan Farm Park in northern Virginia and more recently they have gone to Washington’s Mount Vernon.  The domesticated birds are not in terrific health so the spared birds usually die of natural causes in a year or so.   A domesticated bird weighs 25 or more pounds when fully grown but one bird in the UK was weighed in at 86 pounds (about the size of a large German shepherd). It seems turkeys have particularly weak hearts.  A farm near an air station saw their birds drop over when a sonic boom from a passing jet reached them.

12. Back from the Brink

America’s turkeys almost went extinct in 1930 from loss of forest habitat and over hunting.  Recovery efforts, including those by NWF and the Wild Turkey Federation, have been successful over the past 80 years and there are now an estimated 7 million wild turkeys in North and Central America.

As you celebrate Thanksgiving this year and have either turkey or even tofurkey (for non meat eaters), reflect on the rich traditions and interesting attributes of turkeys, their interactions with people, efforts to save them and keep an eye peeled for wattle and snood.

Do you want to help conserve wildlife and wild places? NWF has just launched a new online feature called “Choose Your Cause.” Just click on the cause you care about most and enjoy inspiring stories from folks on-the-ground who are working tirelessly to protect the wildlife and wild places we all love.

The Pilgrims’ first thanksgiving celebration (which lasted three days) probably took place in mid October 1621, after an unexpectedly bountiful harvest. The newcomers invited local Indians—who had given them a lot of useful advice on farming—to join them. According to various sources, the Pilgrims enjoyed a wide range of wild animal foods collected from forest, meadow and sea. Those species continued as staple foods in America for at least another 250 years. But how do the creatures on which the Pilgrims dined fare today?

A wild turkey almost glows with bronze iridescence in this photo by Sonya L. Shaw.

Let’s take a look at eight types of wild creatures the Pilgrims ate:

Turkey

A large bird of woods and plain, the turkey was common across much of the area we know today as the United States. The Pilgrims and their Indian allies probably had access to roosts where dozens, even scores, of turkeys bunched up at night. Easy prey for arrow or bullet. Too easy, because within the next 300 years the turkey was nearly wiped out across much of the United States. Massive efforts were undertaken in the 1930s and onward to restore wild turkey populations, which today are common in most states and legal to hunt in season.

Heath Hen

This grouse was so common in the Plymouth area that the birds in later years became a staple diet for servants, being easy to get and cheap. Given that the birds flocked in open areas—scrubby heath barrens—they almost certainly were the species sometimes called partridges in accounts of the Pilgrim celebration. Heavily hunted throughout the colonial period and in the 19th century, and subject to habitat loss, the bird was extinct on the mainland by no later than 1870. The last of them disappeared on Martha’s Vineyard in 1932.

Waterfowl

Ducks, geese and swans were all on the Pilgrims’ table. The birds suffered greatly during the uncontrolled market-hunting years of the 1800s. One species, the Labrador duck, became extinct in the mid 1870s, probably because of egg collecting (it wasn’t favored for its unpalatable meat) and loss of the clam beds in which it found winter food. Drought in the early 1900s hurt waterfowl across the nation. But conservationists in the 1930s set to work helping the birds recover, often with the leadership of J.N. “Ding” Darling, the founder of the National Wildlife Federation. Today, waterfowl populations are carefully managed and hunting is controlled. Waterfowl numbers still have ups and downs, but they are unlikely to join the heath hen in oblivion.

Bald Eagle

Yes, the Pilgrims apparently served eagle during the celebration. In the mid 1900s, the use of pesticides nearly put the bald eagle and many of its relatives, from peregrines to condors, out of business. In the Lower 48 States, fewer than 500 bald eagle pairs survived in 1960. Now, almost 10,000 pairs live in the Lower 48, thanks to regulation of DDT and other pesticides, as well as a ban that NWF helped initiate on lead shot, which poisoned the birds when they scavenged waterfowl shot and lost by hunters.

Lobsters

Lobster populations as a rule remain safe, and the animals are still common on American dinner plates. These crustaceans are carefully managed by both state and federal agencies, and restrictions are based on increasingly refined data.

Atlantic Cod

Caught off New England, the fish that was so common and commercially important that it gave its name to a Massachusetts cape has not done so well. In the 1990s, the catch of cod was sinking fast because of overharvest by the fishing industry. Today, federal regulations are helping to restore the battered cod populations, though numbers are still down. However, catch data suggest that improvements are on the way, though the species still suffers the effects of overfishing.

Eel

These slippery, slender fish were once common in New England rivers, where they matured before returning to the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic, a warm-water area where eels breed and hatch. Overfishing and damming of streams has greatly reduced eel populations in the Northeast. In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service turned down a petition to protect eels under the Endangered Species Act.

White-Tailed Deer

Venison was also on the 1621 menu. In the 1800s, deer in many states were nearly wiped out by uncontrolled hunting for meat and hides and by loss of habitat as forests were cut. But in the 1900s, wildlife managers began developing more scientific methods for monitoring and managing deer, which began to rebound as forests grew back. Today, deer may be as populous as they were in 1621.

Bonus Species

It’s not a meat species, being a tree, but let’s look at one last item on the Pilgrims’ plates—chestnuts. When the first colonists arrived in North America, the American chestnut tree ranged across New England and much of the region east of the Mississippi, with the exception of most of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and the southeastern coastal states.

About 25 percent of all trees in the Appalachia Mountains were American Chestnuts, which grew up to 150 feet tall. They provided food for myriad animals as well as for humans. In 1904, chestnut trees in what is now the Bronx Zoo began dying. The cause: a bark fungus inadvertently bought into the United States on Asian chestnut trees.

The Asian trees could withstand the fungus, but the American trees could not. Perhaps 3 billion American chestnut trees died as a result. Today, probably fewer than 100 large chestnut trees survive in the species’ original range. Trees still sprout from old root systems, but these trees rarely grow more than 20 feet tall before the bark fungus kills them. Efforts are under way to recover the species and return it to its former range.

Do you want to help conserve wildlife and wild places? NWF has just launched a new online feature called “Choose Your Cause.” Just click on the cause you care about most  and enjoy inspiring stories and photos from folks on-the-ground who are working tirelessly to protect the wildlife and wild places we all love.