342 BULLETIN 16 2, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Turkeys. The old hen, hard pressed, soon rose from the grass and sailed away 

 across the tops of the cypress trees. More youngsters kept popping up until 

 there were eleven sitting about in the saplings some twelve or fifteen feet up. 

 Soon one gave a peculiar little quit, and then to my utter astonishment flew 

 straight away over the tops of the cypress trees after the old hen, and one by 

 one the rest followed. My guide pronounced them to be about two weeks old 

 and that seemed to me about correct. 



The ability of very small young to fly is also attested by Donald 

 J. Nicholson (1928), who writes: 



On May 3, my brother Wray and I were going thru the pine and cypress 

 country just east of Turner's River about one mile, and just about noon we 

 came upon a turkey hen with five or six little ones not quite as large as a 

 full-grown Bobwhite. We stood and watched her for a few seconds, and she 

 ran slowly thru the scattered low palmettos with the young scampering along. 

 We conceived the idea that it might be possible to catch one of the youngsters, 

 and began to give chase, but immediately they all rose and flew with strong 

 flight, alighting in the lower limbs of a thirty-foot pine tree. We managed 

 to find two of the young perched on dead branches not far apart, peering 

 down upon us ; they did not offer to fly or show any restlessness. 



Behavior. — Again Nicholson says: 



One day we were driving along the Tamiami Trail not far from where we 

 encountered the young turkeys, and saw five large gobblers feeding right out 

 in the open, 400 yards from the road. It was a sort of prairie or savanna, 

 among the stands of cypress, and had been burned over ; short grass had grown 

 up. The birds paid not the slightest heed to us and we sat and watched them 

 for ten or twenty minutes. However, one bird would stand with head and neck 

 erect ; as if on guard while the others fed ; then another would take its place. 



MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO INTERMEDIA Sennett 



RIO GRANDE TURKEY 



HABITS 



When George B. Sennett (1879) first called attention to the char- 

 acters in which the Rio Grande turkey differs from the other races 

 of wild turkeys, he evidently thought it was an intermediate and 

 should not be named, for he said, at that time: "All Lower Rio 

 Grande specimens, therefore, must be held as gallopavo (the Mexican 

 form), or a var. intermedia established — an alternative not to be 

 desired." Later on, however, he (1892) described and named it 

 ellioti, in honor of Dr. Daniel G. Elliot. But his earlier name, 

 intermedia, must stand under the law of priority. He says that it 



* * * can be distinguished from the other forms by its dark buff edgings 

 on tail and upper and lower tail-coverts, in contrast with the white color on 

 the same parts of mexicana, and the deep, dark, reddish chestnut of the same 

 parts in M. gallopavo, the eastern United States bird. The lower back is a 

 deep blue-black and is wanting in those brilliant metallic tints so prevalent 

 in the eastern bird and in the type of mexicana. The primaries of the wing are 



