Turkeys sweep up all available seeds.

While feasting on a recent turkey dinner we glanced outside to see enthusiastic hungry wild turkeys trotting towards us. Hunters consider the gigantic birds wary and elusive. Ours aren’t. Whenever we scatter birdseed, they dash from the woods and sometimes even follow us when they see us carrying the can that holds seed.

Turkeys are fun to watch and delicious to eat. Beef, pork, lamb, and chicken all originated in the Old World and were brought to North America during early settlement days. The turkey is the only major American native food animal that’s today eaten around the glove. It took a double route to the dinner table.

Turkeys Crossing the Ocean…

Early European explorers discovered wild turkeys in the vast forests of eastern North America and watched their domesticated cousins scratching around Native American villages, especially in Mexico and Central America. By the 1500s sailing ships bearing live domestic turkeys were heading for Europe, where they soon became an esteemed food. Today, European farmers produce about 13 million tons of the tasty birds.

…and Back Again

A century or so after being introduced to Europe, the Pilgrims brought domestic turkeys with them when they crossed the Atlantic westward. For the turkey species, it was their second ocean crossing. During the next 250 years, Americans ate both wild and domesticated turkeys.

Too Much of a Good Thing

They overdid it. Overhunting, combined with massive habitat destruction, reduced wild turkey numbers to around 30,000 by the early Twentieth Century. Although millions of domestic turkeys lived on farms, wild ones survived only in remote forests and swamps. They seemed on the verge of extinction.

Help for Endangered Turkeys

That quickly changed. Thanks to the efforts of the National Wild Turkey Federation and state wildlife agencies, turkeys made a remarkable comeback. Flocks were captured, moved to places that seemed suitable for them, and released. They quickly multiplied and began expanding.

When we moved to Iowa in 1978 biologists believed the husky birds could only survive in large forests. Iowa only has a few big woods where wild turkeys were released. Soon the birds proved the experts wrong. They began expanding and even moved into cities and towns. Wild turkeys are so common today that efforts to catch and move them to new habitats aren’t needed.

Turkey Sub-Species

The National Wild Turkey Federation’s website includes much about the history and habits of this remarkable bird. According to them, turkeys live almost coast to coast from Canada to Mexico in five subspecies.

The Eastern wild turkey lives across about half of the eastern portion of the United States. It has chestnut brown tips on its tail feathers. Gobblers can reach 30 pounds and sport a long beard. Hens are much smaller and sleeker.

The Osceola wild turkey makes its home in Florida. Its tail feathers are tipped in brown on a bird that’s smaller than the Eastern.

The Rio Grande’s tail feathers are tipped in tan. It’s also a smallish subspecies with only a medium length beard.

The Miriam’s sports white-tipped tail feathers. It lives in the mountain west. Although it has a short beard it can be as large as the eastern subspecies.

Finally, there’s the Gould’s wild turkey that only lives in Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Mexico. It is the rarest subspecies.

There is also a totally separate wild turkey species. It’s the Ocellated. This gorgeous beardless bird lives only in southern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala.

Turkey Behavior Entertains

Showing off.

We never tire of hearing wild turkeys’ springtime gobbling, watching them strut, and sometimes spotting them fly up into tall trees in the late evening. How they keep warm enough to sleep in their treetop perches during blizzards astounds us. Turkeys are also fun to watch at our feeder, although they gobble up so many seeds there’s little left for smaller songbirds.