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Biology 250
Description
Wild Turkeys are very large, plump birds with long legs, wide, rounded tails, and a small head on a long, slim neck.
Turkeys are dark overall with a bronze-green iridescence to most of their plumage. Their wings are dark, boldly barred with white. Their rump and tail feathers are broadly tipped with rusty or white. The bare skin of the head and neck varies from red to blue to gray.
Behavior
Turkeys travel in flocks and search on the ground for nuts, berries, insects, and snails. They use their strong feet to scratch leaf litter out of the way. In early spring, males gather in clearings to perform courtship displays. They puff up their body feathers, flare their tails into a vertical fan, and strut slowly while giving a characteristic
Meleagris gallopavo
Wild Turkey
gobbling call. At night, turkeys fly up into trees to roost in groups.
Habitat
Wild Turkeys live in mature forests, particularly nut trees such as oak, hickory, or beech, interspersed with edges and fields. You may also see them along roads and in woodsy backyards. After being hunted out of large parts of their range, turkeys were reintroduced and are numerous once again.
Diet
Wild Turkeys sometimes climbing into shrubs or low trees for fruits. They also scratch the forest floor for acorns from red oak, white oak, chestnut oak, and black oak, along with American beech nuts, pecans, hickory nuts, wild black cherries, white ash seeds, and other seeds and berries. They will strip seeds from sedges and grasses, occasionally supplementing their plant diet with salamanders, snails, ground beetles, and other insects.
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