Turkey (Ornithology any species)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in ornithology, any species of the genus Meleagris. They are the largest of the game birds, and for that reason have been domesticated for a great length of time. All the species have the head naked, with wattles or folds of bright naked skin, which becomes much more brilliant when the bird is excited or angry, and a curious tuft of long hair on the breast. The plumage is always more or less metallic. The common turkey, Meleagris gallopavo is brownish-yellow on the upper parts of the body, and each feather has a broad resplendent black edge, hinder portions of the black feathers and tail coverts dark reddish-brown, striped with green and black; breast yellowish-brown, darkest at sides; belly and sides brownishgray; rump feathers pale black, with a darker edge; fore parts of head and throat pale sky blue, warts on face AFRICAN WATER TURKEY bright red. They often weigh from 20 to 60 pounds, and measure at least three feet in height; but the wild birds are much finer than the domesticated race, which, contrary to the general rule, has degenerated under the care of man. They are gregarious, and inhabit the E. portion of North America, feeding on grass, grain, insects, fruit, it, etc. The domesticated birds may be seen in every farm yard, and large numbers are bred and fattened. The ocellated turkey, M. ocellata, a very fine and brilliantly colored species, having eyelike markings on the tail feathers and upper wing coverts, is found in Honduras and Yucatan. The other species M. mexicana, from Central America, Mexico, and the table-lands of the Rocky Mountains, closely resembles M. gallopavo, and is popularly known as the Mexican turkey.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote in 1921 that turkeys were plentiful in the eastern woods, but within about fifteen years market hunting and forest clearance had cut the wild population to perhaps 30,000 birds in scattered pockets. Decades of trap-and-transfer restocking by state wildlife agencies reversed that: wild turkeys now number in the millions and range across nearly every state, including places they never occupied historically. Taxonomy has tightened too — only two species are recognised, Meleagris gallopavo and the ocellated M. ocellata, with Collier's "Mexican turkey" demoted to a subspecies, and the domestic bird is now known to descend from turkeys domesticated in Mesoamerica rather than from eastern stock. Modern commercial Broad Breasted Whites are so heavily muscled that they cannot fly or mate naturally, and are bred almost entirely by artificial insemination.
Written for this edition, 2026.