EASTERN TUEKEY 335 



jackets (Vespa germanica), 1 grasshopper, and 3 katydids {Cyrtophyllus 

 perspiculatus). The vegetable food was wild black cherries, grapes, berries of 

 flowering dogwood and sour gum, 2 chestnuts, 25 whole acorns (Quercus 

 palustris and Q. velutina), a few alder catkins, seeds of jewel weed, and 500 

 seeds of tick-trefoil (Meibomia nudiflora). Another turkey, also shot in 

 December, had eaten a ground beetle, an ichneumon fly, 2 wheel bugs, 10 yellow- 

 jackets, a meadow grasshopper, 75 red-legged grasshoppers, a few sour-gum 

 berries, some pine seeds (with a few pine needles, probably taken accidentally), 

 several acorns, a quarter of a cupful of wheat, and a little corn. 



Various other kinds of berries, fruits, and insects are doubtless 

 eaten when available, as turkeys will eat almost anything they can 

 find in these lines. 



Behavio7\ — The turkey's ordinary method of locomotion is walking 

 or running; the long powerful legs enable these birds to travel long 

 distances and very rapidly on foot. But they are also strong fliers 

 when hard pressed or when necessity requires it, and can fly for a 

 considerable distance or even across wide rivers. What few turkeys 

 I have seen in flight looked to me like huge ruffed grouse, with long 

 tails spread and heavy wings beating rapidly, though the speed of 

 these large heavy birds is proportionately much less. Audubon 

 (1840) says: 



Their usual mode of progression is what is termed walking, during which 

 they frequently open each wing partially and successively, replacing them 

 again by folding them over each other, as if their weight were too great. 

 Then, as if to amuse themselves, they will run a few steps, open both wings 

 and fan their sides, in the manner of the common fowl, and often take two or 

 three leaps in the air and shake themselves. During melting snowfalls, they 

 will travel to an extraordinary distance and are then followed in vain, it being 

 impossible for hunters of any description to keep up with them. They have 

 then a dangling and straggling way of running, which, awkward as it may 

 seem, enables them to outstrip any other animal. I have often, when on a 

 good horse, been obliged to abandon the attempt to put them up, after following 

 them for several hours. 



While traveling about during fall and winter the sexes gather 

 into separate flocks, the females forming the largest flocks; young 

 males also flock by themselves and, for the most part, keep away 

 from the old gobblers. When flocks of old and young males happen 

 to meet they do not ordinarily quarrel; but they seem to have dif- 

 ferent interests. 



What few turkeys still survive, in regions where they are much 

 hunted, have developed a high degree of shrewdness and cunning. 

 An instance of cunning is given by Dr. J. M. Wheaton (1882) as 

 follows : 



As if aware that their safety depended on their preserving an incognito 

 when observed, they effect the unconcern of their tame relatives so long as a 

 threatened danger is passive or unavoidable. I have known them to remain 

 quietly perched upon a fence while a team passed by; and one occasion knew 

 a couple of hunters to be so confused by the actions of a flock of five, which 



