440 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



dd. Upper body plumage highly glossed with greenish and reddish-golden 

 reflections, less purplish bronzy (Veracruz to Oaxaca). 



Meleagris gallopavo gallopavo (p. 454) 

 cc. Lower back and rump with reddish and greenish-golden metallic reflections, 

 not bluish black (eastern Chihuahua, Durango, to northern Jalisco). 



Meleagris gallopavo mexicana (p. 455) 



MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO SILVESTRIS Vieillot 



Eastern Turkey 



Adult male. — Head, elongated frontal appendage, neck, chin, and throat 

 bare, chiefly pale bluish in life, mixed with purplish red, only sparsely 

 feathered with blackish hairlike feathers chiefly on the midventral line 

 and with black and chestnut broader but short feathers on the middorsal 

 line; a little tuft of dirty buff feathers broadly tipped with black over the 

 ear openings ; the skin of the back and sides of neck and extreme lower 

 throat coarsely rugose, the carunculations increasing in size toward the 

 body, assuming the size of wattles at the feather line ; general coloration 

 of body dark brown with variable brilliant metallic reflections of rich cop- 

 pery bronze changing to metallic red and green in certain lights, each 

 feather of back, breast, sides, and flanks, together with the scapulars and 

 lesser upper wing coverts, sharply margined terminally with velvety black 

 (narrowly bluish at either edge) ; lower back and rump with black tips 

 much broader and without greenish bronze, with only a broad subterminal 

 pinkish bronze band narrowly edged with greenish basally, the feathers 

 of the back, scapulars, and lesser upper wing coverts averaging more 

 greenish, less coppery than those of the rump and flanks ; upper tail 

 coverts dark purplish chestnut with a narrow subterminal bar of velvety 

 black preceded by a broad band of metallic pinkish bronze, which in turn 

 is preceded by a broad, velvety, greenish, black bar ; the rest of the feathers 

 (actually their greatest part but which is usually hidden by overlapping) 

 dull russet to cinnamon-brown narrowly banded, vermiculated, and 

 mottled with blackish ; tail varying from russet to Front's brown heavily 

 broadly vermiculated to barred with fuscous-black to black (the vermicu- 

 lations approaching barring more on the lateral rectrices, especially on 

 their inner webs), crossed by a broad subterminal band of dull black, 

 which breaks up into a vermiculated area on its distal side also, very 

 similar to the most proximal area, and tipped broadly with tawny snuff 

 brown to cinnamon-brown, the under surface of tail paler than the upper 

 side ; the subterminal black band greatly increasing in width on the lateral 

 feathers and the more distal vermiculated area correspondingly decreasing 

 laterally ; greater upper wing coverts glossy bronzy vinaceous-brown on 

 the exposed, outer webs, dusky green gray with subterminal oil-green 

 sheen on the covered inner webs, both webs subterminally broadly banded 

 with black and narrowly tipped with dirty buffy white ; primaries clove 

 brown barred with white, the white bars nearly, if not quite, as wide as the 



