The Wild Turkey {MeleogHs gallopavo sUvestHs) 

 By John James Audubon 



Length: 48 to 50 inches. 



Range: United States from Massachusetts to the Gulf Coast and west to 

 the plains. 



The great size and beauty of the wild turkey, its value as a delicate and highly 

 prized article of food, and the circumstance of its being the origin of the domestic 

 race now generally dispersed over both continents, render it one of the most 

 interesting of the birds indigenous to the United States. 



The turkey is irregularly migratory as well as irregularly gregarious. With 

 reference to the first of these circumstances I have to state that whenever the 

 mast or food supply of one portion of the country happens greatly to exceed 

 that of another, the turkeys are insensibly led toward that spot, by gradually 

 meeting in their haunts with more fruit the nearer they advance toward the place 

 where it is most plentiful. In this manner flock follows after flock until one 

 district is entirely deserted while another is overrun by them. 



About the beginning of October, when scarcely any of the seeds and fruits 

 have yet fallen from the trees, these birds assemble in flocks and gradually move 

 toward the rich bottom lands of the Ohio and Mississippi. The males, or, as 

 ihey are more commonly called, the gobblers, associate in parties of from ten to a 

 hundred and search for food apart from the females ; while the latter are seen 

 either advancing singly, each with its brood of young then about two-thirds 

 grown, or in connection with other families, forming parties often amounting to 

 seventy or eighty in<lividuals. 



When the turkeys arrive in parts where the mast is abundant they separate 

 into smaller flocks composed of birds of all ages and both sexes and devour all 

 before them. This happens about the middle of November. So gentle do they 

 sometimes become after these long journeys that they have been seen to approach 

 the farmhouses, associate with the domestic fowls, and enter the stables and com- 

 cribs in quest of food. In this way, roaming about the forests and feeding 

 chiefly on mast, they pass the auiunni and })art of the winter. 



About the middle of April, when the season is dry, tlie female wild turkeys 

 begin to look out for a place in which to deposit their eggs. This place requires 

 to be as much as possible concealed from the eye of the crow, as that bird often 

 watches the turkey when going to her nest and. waiting in the neighborhood until 

 she has left it, removes and eats the •-gg'i- 



The nest, v.hich consists of a few withered leaves, is placed on the ground 

 in a hollow scooped out by the side of a log. or below the fallen top of a dry 

 leafy tree, under a thicket of sumac briers, or a few feet within the edge of a 

 canebrake, but always in a dry place. The eggs, which are of a dull green color, 

 sprinkled with red dots, sometimes numl)er to twenty, although the more usual 

 number is from ten to fifteen. 



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