TURKEYS: MERRIAM TURKEY 
231 
State Records. —In 1820, Major Long, on his expedition from Pittsburgh to the 
Rocky Mountains, found turkeys common at the junction of the Purgatory and 
Arkansas Rivers. There his party divided, and Say’s division, which followed down 
the Arkansas, did not report seeing them until they were about where Wichita is now; 
Long’s division, which went south into New Mexico and traversed the northeastern 
part of the State, first recorded them in New Mexico along the Mora River near 
its junction with the Canadian River. Here he reported seeing daily ‘‘numbers of 
antelope with some signs of bear, deer, and turkeys” (in James, 1823, Vol. 2, p. 96). 
In 1832-33, Latrobe reported killing twenty turkeys in the region of the North 
Fork of the Canadian River, and when Abert explored the valley of the Canadian 
River, in 1845, he found turkeys abundant September 4, when about ten miles 
west of the Texas-New Mexico line. They continued to be common all the way 
down the river to its mouth in Oklahoma. As the Oklahoma birds are certainly 
silvestris and the range was continuous thence to eastern New Mexico along the 
Canadian River, it is safe to assume that the New Mexico birds belonged to the same 
form. Abert recorded turkeys as common at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River in 
Colorado, the starting point of his expedition, and as present up the Purgatory River 
to its source near Raton Pass. These, of course, were merriami. He does not men¬ 
tion seeing the birds from the east side of Raton Pass for the next hundred miles, or 
until he was far out on the plains. It is interesting to note that he began to see them 
soon after he found plum thickets, which are favorite turkey resorts. 
No subsequent travelers have noted the turkey in this district and it seems certain 
that the ranges of silvestris and merriami did not meet, but were separated by the 
whole foothills country in northeastern New' Mexico and by more than two hundred 
miles of treeless plains in Colorado and Kansas.—W. W. Cooke. 
Additional Literature.—Wright, A. H., Auk, XXXI, 334-358, 463-473, 
1914; XXXII, 61-81, 207-224, 348-366, 1915 (early records). 
MERRIAM TURKEY: Meleagris gallop&vo merriami Nelson 
Plate 21 
Description. — Male: Length 48-50 inches, wing 21, tail 18.5, w r eight 16-40 
pounds (average about 12 pounds); [one gobbler of about 30 pounds had a tail of 17 
inches, spurs 1 inch, and beard 10 inches (Ligon) ]. Female: Smaller. Adult male: 
Head and neck bare, dull bluish violet; top of head creamy white, bluish violet in 
the creases; wattles, hanging from base of bill, red washed with creamy white, at 
base pale ochraceous-bufT; chest with bristly tuft of beard; feathers of underparts 
metallic bronzy green and reddish, tipped w r ith velvety black; feathers of low'er back 
and rump metallic, tipped with black; tail, tail coverts, and feathers of lower rump 
broadly tipped with buffy whitish. Adult female: Similar, but smaller and duller. 
Range. —Transition and Upper Sonoran Zones in mountains of southern Colo¬ 
rado, New r Mexico, Arizona, western Texas, northern Sonora, and Chihuahua, breed¬ 
ing in or near Transition Zone yellow pines, and wintering in Upper Sonoran nut 
pines and junipers or lower. 
State Records. —The report of turkeys seen near Taos in 1540 by members of 
the Coronado Expedition constitutes probably the earliest bird record within the 
confines of the present State of New Mexico. [In the early days, they were found 
in all timbered mountains of the State and in only a few r isolated areas have they 
been exterminated—principally Animas, Guadalupe, Gallina, Magdalena, Sandia 
and Turkey Mountains (Ligon, 1927).! In 1824, Timothy Flint reports, James O. 
Pattie of Kentucky “saw great numbers of . . . turkeys” in Socorro County; and 
in the beginning of 1825 he reported fat turkeys along the banks of the San Francisco 
