By Matthew L. Miller, the director of science communications for The Nature Conservancy and editor of the Cool Green Science blog.
It’s that time of year when attention in the United States turns to the wild turkey: the de facto symbol of Thanksgiving. In addition to the meal, turkey images adorn everything from door decorations to advertisements. And chances are, if you live in the U.S., there’s a wild turkey roaming near you.
The wild turkey has become a familiar bird, now scratching even in suburbia. But its familiarity should make it no less fascinating.
Here are some essential turkey facts that you can use to dazzle your family and friends at your Thanksgiving feast.
Fact No. 1: Like that certain uncle of yours at the dinner table, turkeys will eat just about anything that fits into their mouths. Acorns and azalea galls, bluegills and blueberries, crabgrass and caterpillars: they all go right in. Prickly pear and panic grass, toothwort and tadpoles, grasshoppers and grapes, pecans and paw paws, sedges and snakes, and the list goes on.
Depending on the plants species and time of year, turkeys will eat roots, bulbs, stems, buds, leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds.
In search of protein, they move about the woods like a pack of velociraptors, thrashing up the leaf litter and eating anything that moves. Their quarry includes all manner of insects as well as salamanders, lizards and frogs. Yes, you read that right, frogs.
Fact No. 2: The wild turkey’s recovery is one of the greatest wildlife comeback stories of all time.
Any conservationist knows about the plight of the African elephant and the orangutan. Consider this: At the turn of the 20th century, the population of American wild turkeys was lower than the population of elephants or orangutans today.
Turkeys had suffered from a history of unregulated hunting and loss of forest habitat. As was the case with many larger North American wildlife species of the time, many considered them doomed. Their population was estimated to be only around 30,000 birds.
What happened next is one of the great chapters of conservation history: a combination of regulation and reintroduction, coupled with the reforestation of the eastern part of the country. The turkey’s recovery featured mistakes, to be sure, like using birds raised in hatcheries for reintroductions. (They lacked the ability to survive in wild conditions.) But trapping wild birds from abundant populations and releasing them in suitable habitat proved spectacularly successful.
Some say too successful. Today turkeys are established well beyond their native range, and they can be a nuisance in agricultural and suburban areas. Still, I suspect most conservationists would take a future with too many orangutans rather than not enough.
Fact No. 3: There are actually five wild turkey subspecies scattered across North America, each with some fairly distinct differences in plumage and shape.
During turkey recovery, wildlife managers trapped and moved turkeys widely. Some 200,000 turkeys were moved to different locales. Unfortunately, in the rush to establish new flocks, many managers didn’t pay attention to subspecies. What resulted is a great genetic shuffling of turkey subspecies with some populations remaining pure and others consisting now of hybrids.
There are western states outside the turkey’s native habitat that have as many as three subspecies, each now living in different habitat types.
Fortunately, there are still five subspecies roaming the continent. Conservationists can learn a lesson in wildlife restoration here and can work to protect the remaining pure populations.
Fact No. 4: There is a turkey so weird that it looks like something Dr. Seuss concocted; it’s called the ocellated turkey.
Found only on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata) certainly bears a resemblance to the American wild turkey.
But it’s a different species. It is smaller and lacks the “beard” typical of the more familiar wild turkey. Its mating call is higher pitched than the usual “gobble.” The most striking difference, though, is the color.
The vibrant, almost unreal color features iridescent feathers, large spots on the tail, a bright red ring around the eye and a blue head covered with red and yellow nodules (nodules that swell and become brighter in males in the breeding season).
Unlike the American wild turkey, the ocellated turkey is not well studied and appears to be in decline.
Fact No. 5: The Australian brushturkey isn’t a turkey at all, though it sure looks like one.
Brushturkeys are actually megapodes, a family of birds found only in Australasia, Polynesia, New Guinea and the Indonesian Islands east of the Wallace Line. The family name literally means “big foot,” and one glance at the dinosaur-like feet of the brushturkey is all you need to rest assured that this name is quite accurate.
Utterly unmistakable even to the most novice of wildlife watchers, brushturkeys have glossy, brown-black plumage and a massive, broad tail that, unlike Northern American turkeys, is oriented vertically.
The species’ most distinctive feature is undoubtedly its brilliant red face and colorful wattle, the dangling, fleshy growth hanging from the bird’s throat. Wattle color varies with both sex and location: Males in the southern parts of the bird’s range have a bright yellow wattle while males on the Cape York Peninsula have light blue wattles. Females in both areas have dull yellow wattles.