Bird Study 



143 



THE TURKEY 



Teacher's Story 



HAT the turkey and not the eagle should have been 

 chosen for our national bird, was the conviction of 

 Benjamin Franklin. It is a native of our country, 

 it is beautiful as to plumage, and like the American 

 Indian, it has never yielded entirely to the in- 

 fluences of civilization. Through the hundreds of 

 years of domestication it still retains many of its 

 wild habits. In fact, it has many qualities in 

 common with the red man. Take for instance its 

 sun dance, which any one can witness who is 



willing to get up early enough in the morning and who has a flock of 

 turkeys at hand. Miss Ada Georgia made a pilgrimage to witness this 

 dance and she describes it thus: "While the dawn was still faint and 

 gray, the long row of birds on the ridge-pole stood up, stretched legs and 

 wings and flew down into the orchard beside the barnyard and began a 

 curious, high-stepping, 'flip-flop' dance on the frosty grass. It consisted 

 of little, awkward, up-and-down jumps, varied by forward springs of 

 about a foot, with lifted wings. Both hens and males danced, the latter 

 alternately strutting and hopping and all 'singing,' the hens calling 

 'Quit, quit,' the males accompanying with a high-keyed rattle, sounding 

 like a hard wood stick drawn rapidly along a picket fence. As the sun 

 came up and the sky brightened, the exhibition ended suddenly when 

 'The Captain,' a great thirty pound gobbler and leader of the flock, made 

 a rush at one of his younger brethren who had dared to be spreading a tail 

 too near to his majesty." 



