A wild turkey in Mariposa County
Credit: Linda Gast
November 23, 2017 - Maybe you’re already dreaming about Thanksgiving: turkey, stuffing, all the pies. And maybe you thought you knew everything about turkeys. Think again.
Wild turkeys are not hard to find – if you look in the right place. National wildlife refuges, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, are great places to view wild turkeys or find the perfect hunt. Refuge trails generally are open sunrise to sunset, many even on Thanksgiving Day when refuge visitor centers will be closed. Free trail maps are often available outside a visitor center or at a refuge entrance kiosk. Find your trail online.
Here are some more facts that could add to the lively talk around your holiday table.
- Thought the only turkey sound is gobble, gobble? In fact, turkeys make all kinds of sounds: fly-down or fly-up cackle; kee kee run; excited yelp and more. Hear them all, thanks to the National Wild Turkey Federation.
- Turkey droppings tell a bird’s sex and age. Male droppings are j-shaped; female droppings are spiral-shaped. The larger the diameter, the older the bird.
- An adult turkey has 5,000 to 6,000 feathers – count them! – on its body.
- Turkeys may look off-kilter – tilting their heads and staring at the sky – yet they’re fast. In a poultry race, they can clock more than 12 miles per hour, beating chickens by three miles per hour. The eastern cottontail leaves them both in the dust as it zig zags away from danger at 18miles per hour.
- Tom turkeys aren’t the only ones that swagger and fan their tail feathers to woo mates and ward off rivals. Some hens strut, too.
- Young turkeys – poults – scarf down insects like candy. They develop more of a taste for plants after they’re four weeks old.
- Move over, American bald eagle. Ben Franklin called the wild turkey a “bird of courage” and thought it would make a better national symbol.
Source: U.S. FWS
