TURKEYS 



(Family Pbasianida) 



Wild Turkey 



(Meleagris gallopavo) 



Length About four feet ; largest of the game birds. 



Male Head and upper neck naked ; plumage with metallic 

 bronze, copper, and green reflections, the feathers tipped 

 with black; secondaries green barred with whitish, the 

 primaries black barred with white. (The wild turkey to be 

 distinguished from the domestic bird chiefly by the chestnut, 

 instead of white, tips to the tail and upper tail coverts.) A 

 long bunch of bristles hangs from centre of breast; bill red, 

 like the head ; legs red and spurred. 



Female Smaller, dull of plumage, and without the breast bristles. 



Range United States, from the Chesapeake to the Gulf coast, 

 and westward to the Plains. 



Season Permanent resident. 



Once abundant so far north as Maine, Ontario, and Dakota, 

 this noble game bird, now hunted to very near the extinction 

 point, has had its range so restricted by the advance of civiliza- 

 tion, for which it has a well grounded antipathy, that the most 

 inaccessible mountains or swampy bottom lands, the borders 

 of woodland streams that have never echoed to the whistle 

 of a steamboat, are not too remote a habitation. Originally no 

 more suspicious and wild than a heath hen, according to the 

 testimony of early New Englanders, much persecution has finally 

 made it the most cunning and wary, the most unapproachable 

 bird to be found ; but what possible chance of escape has any 

 wild creature once man, with the manifold aids of civilization at 

 his disposal, determines to possess it ? It cannot be long at the 

 present rate of shrinkage before the turkey, in spite of its marvel- 

 ous cleverness, will follow the great auk to extinction. 



288 



