Turkey

a large bird allied to the peacock, pheasant, and Asiatic jungle fowl, hence to our common barnyard fowls. There are five wild turkeys, all American, one in Yucatan and four in Mexico and the United States. The wild turkey of most writers is a bird of the Eastern States. The Florida turkey is somewhat smaller. The Texan turkey and the Mexican turkey, from which the domestic breeds of Europe are derived, complete the list. A writer in the International Bulletin says:

The colors of the North American turkey are black, beautifully shaded with a rich bronze, the breast plumage being dark bronze, illuminated with a lustrous finish of coppery gold. . . . The full-grown, healthy bird is a beautiful picture of bronze, black, copper, and gold. The Mexican turkey, wild throughout that republic, is short in shank, the feathers of its body are metallic black, shaded only slightly with bronze, while all its feathers are tipped with white. . . . It is thought that the white markings of its plumage appear in the variety known as the Narragansett domestic turkey. The Honduras turkey is scattered well over most of Central America. . . . It is extremely wild and its coloring is the most beautiful of all the family. The head and neck are naked, and no breast tuft is present. The ground color of the plumage is a beautiful bronze-green, banded with gold-bronze, blue, and red, with some bands of brilliant black. The name "Ocellated" is given to it on account of the large spots on the longer feathers, giving them a fanciful resemblance to eyes.

A few scattered flocks of the common wild turkey are yet to be found in the forests of a wide range extending from Wisconsin and Texas to the Atlantic, but they are confined chiefly to the Alleghany Mountains. Except when nesting, wild turkeys feed in flocks and roost in tall timber to which they are accustomed to return each night. The adult male has a length of fifty inches and weighs from sixteen to forty pounds. Its plumage is iridescent.

In domestication the turkey has undergone changes in color and varies greatly in size. It has lost in part its power of flight, but it retains the voice and the love of trees of its wild ancestors. If seen in the woods it would not be easy to tell our large dark turkeys from their untamed cousins. The bare head and neck, large wattles, finger-like fleshy lobe on the forehead, curious tuft of hair on the breast, the choked-up cry, and drumming strut of the barnyard gobbler are all faithful reproductions of the more alert Alleghany bird whose eye and ear are depended upon to guard the flock against the gunner's approach. A method of gleaning stubble fields and examining meadows for grasshoppers must also be an inheritance from the wild. An old gobbler, leader of the barnyard, conducts the flock in a military way. He goes ahead determining the course. His favorite hen comes next, a few feet at his right and as many feet in the rear, a third turkey follows at her right and in the rear, then a fourth and fifth in like order until the whole flock falls in on a slant line and is in motion, in echelon, as military men say. If a turkey is delayed a moment in catching a grasshopper or in gathering a few kernels, it hastens to regain its place in the advancing, slanting line. The hen is prone also to hide her nest in wildwood fashion. The young are very tender and are likely to be drabbled in the morning dew, but as they grow older they become much more hardy than chickens. The turkey was first introduced into England as a park bird. Chambers states that over two thousand roamed the woods of Richmond park in the early half of the eighteenth century.

In America a roast turkey with cranberry sauce is the traditional center of the Thanksgiving dinner. To supply this demand there are about 9,000,000 turkeys in the United States, one for each nine or ten persons. Turkeys raised by Europeans among the foothills of the Himalayas for the Calcutta market are sold at the Christmas season for $5 and even $10 each.

In the United States there are six standard varieties,--the bronze, Narragansett, buff, slate, white, and black. The chief differences are in size and color of plumage.

See Poultry; Pheasant; Bustard