THE TURKEY. 



143 



a dog, they 'would fly off and and seek safety in the 

 nearest woods. On an occasion of this kind, one of 

 them flew across the Susquehanna, and the owner was 

 apprehensive of loosing it. In order to recover it, he sent 

 a boy with a tame turkey, which was released at the 

 place where the fugitive had alighted. This plan was 

 successful. They soon joined company, and the tame 

 bird induced his companion to return home. Mr. 

 Bloom remarked that the wild turkey will thrive more, 

 and keep in better condition than the tame, on the 

 same quantity of food. 



The wild turkey is irregularly migratory, as well as 

 irregularly gregarious. Whenever the forest fruits, 

 (or mast,) of one portion of the country greatly exceeds 

 that of another, thither are the turkeys insensibly led. 

 By gradually meeting in their haunts with more fruit, 

 the nearer they advance towards the place in which it 

 is most plentiful. Thus, in an irregular manner, flock 

 follows flock, until some districts are deserted, while 

 others are crowded with an influx of arrivals. "About 

 the beginning of October," says Audubon, "when 

 scarcely any of the seeds and fruits have fallen from 

 the trees, these birds assemble in flocks, and gradually 

 move towards the rich bottom lands of the Ohio and 

 Mississippi. The males, or, as they are more com- 

 monly 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 union with other families, forming 

 parties often amounting to seventy or eighty individ- 

 uals, all intent on shunning the old cocks, which, 

 when the young birds have attained this size, will 

 fight with and often destroy them by repeated blows 

 on the head. Old and young, however, all move in 

 the same course, and on foot, unless their progress be 

 interrupted by a river, or the hunter's dog force them 

 to take wing. 



"When they come upon a river, they betake them- 



