Wild Turkey
Wild Turkey Meleagris gallopavo
Sound (104k)
Size: Male: 46 inches (117 cm)
Female: 37 inches (94 cm)
Abundance:• Common
Quick Identification: Dark,
iridescent body bare head is pink and blue Male has red skin patch on throat
Identification Tips:
• Very large, small-headed, round-winged, long-tailed,
ground-dwelling bird
• Unfeathered bluish head and reddish throat
• Dark breast, belly and upper back
• Iridescent bronze and green wings
• Barred primaries
• Dark, fan-shaped tail with brown or buff band at tip
Adult male:
• Larger head with wattle at throat, caruncled forehead, and projection behind the bill
• More iridescent plumage
Similar species:
• Too large to be confused with any other bird.
Open woodlands with clearings, forest edges, brushy areas. Semiarid mountains in the southwest. Roost in trees at night. Spends early morning and late afternoon foraging on ground for acorns, seeds, fruits, nuts and insects. Poor flier. Largest North American game bird.
Nesting/Feeding:
Breeding: Mature deciduous and deciduous-conifer forests, open
woodland, especially in mountains. 1 brood. Mating system is polygynous.
Displays: Males gobble and strut with plumage erect, tail
fanned, head ornaments swollen, and wings drooped with quills rattling.
Nest: Usually concealed in grass or shrubs; shallow depression
lined with a few dead leaves, grass. Female builds nest.
Eggs: Ten to twelve. Buff to white,
marked with dull brown. 2.5" (63 mm).
Chick Development: Female incubates. Incubation takes 27-28
days. Development is precocial (mobile, downy, follow parents, are shown food). Young are
able to fly after 6-10 days. Female tends young.
Diet: Mostly seeds, nuts (especially acorns), fruit, leaves of
many plants; also insects, especially grasshoppers, terrestrial invertebrates, small
vertebrates.
Conservation: Winter resident. Reintroduced to much of range
where formerly extirpated by habitat loss and diseases spread by domestic poultry (latter
still problem in east and southeast).
Notes: Nearly became national bird of U.S., losing by one vote
in congressional ballot. Female performs distraction display. Chicks roost under body,
wings, and tail of female until about 4 weeks old. Family groups and broodless females
coalesce into flocks when young are several weeks old. Roost in trees. Winter flocks,
either unisexual or mixed, usually to 40-50, much larger in some areas.
World Range:
Charles Sibley's Birds of the World: Meleagris gallopavo,
WILD TURKEY. Deciduous and mixed forest, open woods, savanna. Locally in lowlands and mts.
to 2100 m from c Washington e across the n U.S. and s Canada to c New England s to s
Calif., s Arizona, s New Mexico, c,s Texas, Gulf coast and Florida. Local in western and
northern parts of range, more continuous from c Minnesota, c Wisconsin, w,s Illinois, c
Indiana, s,e Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, c New England s through Kansas, Oklahoma,
Arkansas, n Louisiana, Gulf states, c Florida. Re-introduced to many parts of the U.S.
where it had been extirpated, and areas where it did not occur naturally in the recent
past, as in California.
In Mexico, formerly in the Sierra Madre Occidental from ne Sonora and nw Chihuahua s to
the c highlands from Jalisco to Puebla and in ne Mexico from e Coahuila, Nuevo León and
Tamaulipas s to Puebla. Now occurs in the Sierra Madre Occidental in e Sonora, w
Chihuahua, w Durango and n Jalisco to Nayarit, and locally in e Coahuila, w Nuevo León
and n San Luis Potosí.
Introduced in New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands and w Europe, but mostly extirpated.
