A Bird of the Season 



BY C. WILLIAM BEEBE, Assistant Curator of Birds, New York Zoological Society 



Illustrated by the author 



ONE of the finest and rarest bird exhibits in the New York Zoologi- 

 cal Park is in the dense thicket of trees and tangled undergrowth in 

 which the flock of Wild Turkeys find a perfectly congenial home. 

 The three hens and the pompous and iris-plumaged old gobbler are as much 

 at home as if in the depths of their native forests in Virginia. They are 

 more easily observed in winter than in summer, on account of the thick 

 growth of sumach, sassafras and grape-vines which has been allowed to 



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MALE WILD TURKEY AT THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK 



grow up in their enclosure, but any time one or more of the Turkeys 

 may be seen scratching among the dead leaves or roosting on some high 

 limb. 



All of the hens have nested and laid eggs, but two factors have made the 

 raising of the young birds a matter of great difficulty, up to the present. 

 One of these is a liver disease which has killed a number, and for which no 

 treatment has thus far been successful. Wet weather is the second enemy 

 from which the newly-hatched chicks have suffered, the slightest wetting 

 during the first two or three weeks after hatching proving fatal. 



Last year a raccoon climbed into the inclosure and killed seventeen 

 young chicks in a single night, but was captured later, and as a penalty suf- 

 fers imprisonment for life. This year, perhaps, as a result of the knowledge 

 obtained from costly experience, better success has attended the efforts at 



(190) 



