Wild Turkey Interview

Wild Turkey

Meleagris gallopavo

Photo courtesy of the
National Park Service

EC: What species do you represent?

Turkey: Wild turkeys

EC: Can you describe yourself?

Turkey: We live in woodlands so we are covered with dark feathers that help us blend in there. You know, camouflage. We don’t have feathers on our throat and head. It is just bare skin that changes color depending on our state of mind. Our heads and neck are usually a flat gray. When we are disturbed or frightened our faces become a pale or white color. The skin becomes bright red when we are threatened. The males will have some blue in their faces and necks when they are courting.

EC: Are you a female turkey?

Turkey: Yes, of course.

EC: How do male and female turkeys differ, I mean, in appearance?

Turkey: Well, we females, people refer to us as hens, we are smaller and weigh less than the males. We generally weigh between 8 and 14 pounds and are about a foot shorter than them with smaller heads. We have more of a streamlined figure too. Whereas the males, humans call them gobblers or toms, weigh between 15 and 28 pounds and stand around 4 feet tall.

The Tom has a “beard” on the breast called a wattle, so do some females, but the male has an intensely bluish/reddish wattle. Only some hens have the wattle and it, as well as their head and neck skin, have less iridescence than the Tom’s.

The Tom also has a fan tail he displays especially during courtship. His tail feathers have red-brown tips which is quite impressive when they are fanned out.

We hens tend to stay together. The males and females will give different sounds sometimes as well. We have some similar calls but when we have chicks, our children, to care for we’ll give a cluck similar to a hen chicken to call our brood, our group of chicks. The males give a “gobble” sound that people like to imitate. That is why the males are called gobblers.

EC: How are you different from domestic turkeys?

Turkey: Well, first of all, we are free. We are free to roam where we please, almost. We have to be sure to avoid people and roads as much as possible. Also your domestic turkeys that humans raise are much bigger and heavier than we are. In fact humans plump them up so much many of them can’t even fly!

They also have different coloring than we do. Ours is more drab to blend in with our environment. For example, while our Toms have reddish brown tipped feathers on their beautiful fan tails, domestic turkeys have white tipped feathers. People are surprised when they see wild turkeys because we do not look like what they have seen in their paintings and drawings. The male only displays their fan tail during courtship.

EC: Where do you live?

Turkey: We live in woods in the eastern United States. Our original range is from southern Maine to the Gulf Coast.

EC: What’s your home like?

Turkey: It depends on what part of the east coast you live on as to how it looks exactly but all the homes are nice. We are shaded and hidden among the trees shuffling our feet through the leaves. Occasionally we pop out into an open area and get some sunshine. There are creeks to drink from or wander through. It is beautiful

EC: What do you like to eat?

Turkey: We like acorns, seeds, small insects, wild berries, fruit, and sometimes grasshoppers and even small snakes!

EC: What is a typical day for you?

Turkey: We spend our days looking for food often in groups. At night we roost in low branches of trees (yes, we can fly!). We are not strong fliers and prefer to avoid danger by running. When it gets dark we go up in the trees to sleep. When the light comes in the morning we fly down to start our foraging.

Some days we’ll have a startle. One of us will spot a predator and sound a signal and we all run or fly to get up in a tree. Sometimes the flying helps us move faster through the woods. Sort of a run and fly escape. Sometimes we hear something moving through the woods near us while we are roosting, just before dark. One of us will sound the alarm and that lets us know if we need to flee or if we are safe up in the trees. We look out for each other.

The quiet uneventful days are best. They are not many, but they are the best. In the spring during our mating season we have very few uneventful days because that is also when people hunt us. That is a stressful time. We are not safe even in the trees from hunters.

EC: Do you have a mate, a significant other?

Turkey: Not really. We don’t “marry” for life like some humans do. In the spring we will come upon some males looking for a mate. It is usually around late March and really picks up by April or early May. They come and puff up their bodies and spread their tails like a peacock. They grunt and make a “gobble gobble” sound and strut about shaking their feathers. We call it their turkey trot. It works. Some of the hens are impressed and become their mate for a brief time. The males will visit a while trying to get as many females as their mate as possible, then move on. It is only in the spring.

EC: Do you have children? Do they stay with you long?

Turkey: I have kids, chicks or poults as they are called. I prepared a nest last spring. We make our nests under a bush in the woods, so they are hidden. I made a shallow depression and lined it and lay the eggs there. The eggs are camouflaged tan with brown speckles. Some hens have as many as 18 eggs. I had 14. After about a month of incubating the eggs my chicks hatched and I was a busy mother. They don’t fly for the first two weeks so I had to be especially careful with them. I stayed on the ground with them instead of roosting in the trees as I normally do. They follow me everywhere. They are with me now, or close by. They’ll follow me for the first year then it is time for them to move on and live their lives.

EC: What do you like to do to enjoy yourself?

Turkey: Just spending time with the other hens, walking through the woods, foraging for food is a nice way to spend a day. Having chicks is nice too but you have to be more alert. You are no longer just looking out for yourself for danger. Being in a group helps with that. When you have chicks though you have to watch out for their safety for predators and make sure they all keep up with you

EC: What would you say is your biggest concern?

Turkey: Becoming extinct. It almost happened once. It could happen for real this time.

My species, wild turkeys, almost entirely disappeared from our original range during the 19th century. Our numbers dropped primarily as a result of over-hunting, land clearing and an increase in agriculture. We had nowhere to go, nowhere live or find food and we were killed in such numbers we could not hatch enough children fast enough to replace our lost families.

Then just prior to World War II, and in the early 1950's, our populations started to expand and grow. Then our numbers had a further dramatic upswing during the 1960s and 1970s. Now we are pretty common.

EC: What do you suppose was the reason for your species’ come back?

Turkey: Well, when humans saw that they had driven us almost to extinction, and in some of our native areas we were extinct, they changed their ways and made some land available for us to live. They made sure there were good homes and lots of food to eat as well. That helped us. Some wild turkeys now live where we never lived before because turkeys were taken from other states where they still had some left and brought them to areas that would make good habitats for us. They put us in places we did not live before because many of the homes we did have were gone forever. We can never go back. Well, those new places worked out well for many turkeys and they thrived.

EC: Now that you have the opportunity to talk to people is there anything you would like to say to them?

Turkey: Well, we have families too. We need a home to live in, a place to sleep, land to grow enough food to feed ourselves and our chicks. We have our own problems. We have cougars and other predators hunting us and our children. Finding enough food and fighting over territories is hard enough. Always fearing that terrible gunshot sound and wondering if our home will be torn down today adds to our stress. I mean, how do we fight that?

Maybe people need to take more time to just walk through the woods and listen to the sounds and notice the smells. Maybe they would enjoy it more and not feel the need to bulldoze it or shoot in it. We are busy looking for food when we walk through the woods but we still notice the beauty and peace in it. Humans need to remember the woods are their home too. They need it as much as we do.

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