10 Massachusetts Audubon Society 



A wild turkey hen in captivity is a decidedly poor mother, but, given 

 her entire liberty and left to herself, she will raise a very large percentage 

 of her brood without any of your kind attention. On the other hand a 

 tame turkey, which is almost an idiot, will drabble her young through 

 the morning dew, lead them about in all sorts of inclement weather, and 

 as likely as not start to hover them at night in a mud-hole, or some other 

 place quite as unsuitable. A pure wild hen is quite the reverse; she stays 

 on high ground while the brood is still young, she keeps them closelv 

 hovered in rainy weather, and she never allows them to become exhausted 

 with too much travel before their tiny legs are strong enough. She is 

 the most watchful and persistent, in her cares of motherhood, of all the 

 wild birds with which I have ever come in contact, and her piercing eye 

 never fails to reveal the presence of an enemy. Like all wild mothers she 

 loves her children, and will suffer herself to take the last chance in order 

 to protect and hide the weakling of her brood. 



For many years it has been my intention to liberate a few of the best 

 birds, just to see what thev would do under our northern conditions. But 

 my stock has been so limited, and the birds so valuable, that I have never 

 felt I could spare the number necessary to form the nucleus of a breeding 

 flock. However, the birds themselves beat me at my own game last year, and 

 this is how it happened. One of the best of my Virginia hens found a hole 

 in the wire, and one morning in early April I found her pen empty — the 

 bird had flown — and, much to mv regret, I was minus one of the finest of 

 my breeding hens. June came with its roses; the blackbirds returned to the 

 "flow" below the big beaver meadows; the old blue heron, that has been 

 my joy and delight, again remodeled her nest down in the tamarack swamp; 

 the little Jenny wren, that has for several years made her home in the skull 

 of a cow, which hangs on the barn, returned with her mate to cheer me the 

 summer through; but no wild turkev ever put in an appearance, and I had 

 long since come to the conclusion that she had fallen prey to some of her 

 natural enemies. But one day in early August, as I was quietly searching 

 for new insects to swell mv already large collection of the "bugs of the 

 Adirondacks," I was startled by the whirring rise of a big bird, and before 

 I could straighten up to see what it was all about, several half-grown young 

 wild turkeys flew almost from under my very feet, sailed with well trained 

 wings down across the marsh, and lit in the vale beyond the beaver dam, 

 amid a tangle of dense foliage, where they were lost to view. The secret 

 was out — my beautiful hen had stolen the march on me, and, true to her 

 kind, had succeeded in eluding the many foxes and great horned owls which 

 haunt this vicinity, had laid her eggs, which for four long weeks must have 

 been carefully brooded, and had brought her youna: to flying size, long 

 before I had even discovered that she was living. Nor was this all; for 

 last year there was an influx of goshawks in this region, which remained 

 and nested, and fed their young, and worked havoc on the partridges and 

 smaller birds which yearly breed near me. Yet this wise old wild turkey 

 hen had escaped them all, and when I saw her last — on November 6th — she 

 still boasted of that proud family, which then numbered fourteen. 



As the winter approached, and the snow came, I felt sure she would 

 return and join the farm flocks, since other wild turkeys, raised with tame 

 white Holland mothers, were gleaning over the entire farm each day and 

 roosting in the trees. But no such thing ever happened, and, whenever 



