imMirjJ. OF L VttSANA-OtiXmFXISH 
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in the heat of the day to the shade of the under¬ 
brush or even of a cut bank. 
Turkeys feed chiefly on vegetable matter. In 
old times the saying, that a good mast year was 
a good turkey year, passed into a proverb. They 
eat beechnuts, chestnuts, various acorns, pecan 
nuts, persimmons, the fruit of the cactus, all 
sorts of wild berries or seeds and grains and 
other vegetable matter, besides all insects. In 
the central and southern Rocky Mountains the 
fruit of the pinon forms a large part of their 
subsistence. As determined by the Biological 
Survey, the turkey’s food consists of 15*4 per 
cent, of animal matter and nearly 84T2 per cent, 
of vegetable matter. Of the vegetable matter, 
buds and leaves constitute nearly 25 per cent., 
fruit nearly 33 and other seeds nearly 20 per 
cent. In the western country turkeys are great 
eaters of grasshoppers. They also destroy the 
tobacco worm and moth when they can get them. 
The breeding season for the turkey ranges 
from February to May, according to the latitude 
which the bird inhabits. At the breeding time, 
and indeed throughout the year until mating in 
the early spring, the hens and young birds asso¬ 
ciate together and apart from the gobblers. 
At mating time the gobbler’s actions are those 
of the domestic turkey. He gobbles loudly, 
struts and spreads his tail, drags his wings on 
the ground and puffs himself out until he has 
made the proper impression on the hen. Often 
several birds are going through this perform¬ 
ance about a single hen, and fights between the 
males are common and, it is said, sometimes 
with fatal results. 
The nest is a mere hollow scratched in the 
ground, lined or not lined with straws, grass 
and a feather or two. The eggs vary in num¬ 
ber from eight to fourteen. Captain Bendire 
reports a case where there were twenty-six eggs 
in a nest, but two hens were at the nest, one 
sitting on the eggs and one standing close by 
them. It is likely, therefore, that occasionally 
two hen turkeys share a nest, as two quail 
sometimes do. 
Like many ground-nesting birds the turkey is 
exceedingly hard to see when on her nest, and 
of the turkey as about other birds, many ex¬ 
amples of this have been related. Capt. B. F. 
Goss, writing May, 1882, in Southern Texas, 
says: 
“We were encamped quite near the nest; one 
morning I noticed a hen turkey stealing through 
the bushes and suspected she was going to her 
nest. We watched her carefully for three 
mornings, and having pretty nearly located the 
nest, commenced a close search, and examined, 
as we thought, every inch of ground. I was 
about giving up, when looking down almost 
at my feet, I saw the bird sitting on the 
nest. She at once ran; she had allowed me to 
pass several times within a foot of her with¬ 
out moving and seemed to know at once when 
she was seen. I have often noticed this trait 
in birds of this genus; as long as unseen you 
can tramp all around them, but they seem to 
know at once when they are seen and lose no 
time in getting away.” 
As long as the hiding bird, which sees and 
hears its pursuer, is convinced that he is still 
ignorant of its position, it feels safe, but the 
moment it recognizes by the expression of the 
man’s eye that its hiding place has been de¬ 
tected, it is off without delay. 
The eggs of the wild turkey are not at all 
unlike those of the domestic bird. Usually they 
are cream-colored, dotted with finer or larger 
spots of reddish brown, chocolate and some¬ 
times lavender. Captain Bendire states that 
the spots are more often very small and fine 
than large. 
The young follow the mother as soon as 
hatched, but Audubon says, “As the hatching 
generally takes place in the afternoon they fre¬ 
quently return to the nest to spend the first 
night there.” 
The young are believed to be very tender and 
subject to many dangers from dampness. Some 
writers declare that the mother leads them on 
high ground for the first week or two of their 
life in order that they may escape the dangers 
of dew or rain from the grass. Audubon says: 
“To prevent the disastrous effect of rainy 
SOUTHERN WILD TURKEY. 
weather the mother, like the skillful physician, 
plucks the buds of the spice wood bush and 
gives them to her young!” The little birds are 
able to fly at about two or three weeks old and 
soon after that leave the ground and roost on 
the low branch of a tree sheltered under their 
mother’s wings. When danger threatens the 
mother turkey, like many other gallinaceous 
birds, calls to her young, which at onoe crouch 
and hide and cannot then be seen. 
It is said that if the male turkey finds a nest 
of eggs upon which the hen is sitting he will 
destroy them and that if he comes upon a brood 
of newly hatched young he will kill them. It 
is certain that during the autumn and winter 
the young birds and the females associate to¬ 
gether, while the old males keep by themselves 
and do not begin to seek the society of their 
mates until the approach of spring. 
In the Rocky Mountains the nests are built 
at an altitude of from 3,000 to 5,000 feet, but 
as the weather grows warmer and the snow dis¬ 
appears, the old hen leads the young up to the 
higher mountains, so that they finally summer 
at an altitude of from eight to ten thousand feet. 
In the late autumn when the weather grows 
cold and snows come on the mountain ranges, 
the birds move down again to sheltered canons 
or timbered river valleys where they spend tl 
winter. 
In the Southern States turkeys have alwa; 
been abundant and their stronghold is still the 
—parts of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgi 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansj 
Missouri and Texas. Merriam’s turkey is sa 
to be almost extinct in Colorado, but is st 
abundant in Arizona and New Mexico. Th 
there should be occasional outlying colonies ■ 
a few birds in Iowa and Nebraska, such as M 
Griswold is told of, seems very surprising, b 
such colonies cannot last long unless protect 
by the owners of the land on which they li\ 
The turkey, grandest of game birds, has be< 
exterminated over much of its former rang 
Great in size, and valuable for food, he is ; 
object of pursuit wherever found. So, throug 
out the farming country of the North and W( 
the turkey is gone and gone forever. As t 
country is settled up is his complete extermin 
tion to follow? Domesticated, he will alwa 
survive, but should we not strive to retain t 
old wild turkey of the Eastern States in 1 
untamed wild state, self-dependent, one of t 
typical inhabitants of our primitive forests ai 
our far stretching Southern plains? 
George Bird Grinnell. 
Blackbirds and Bobolinks. 
Oxford, Conn., Nov. 28. —Editor Forest a> 
Stream: I am much interested in the remar 
recently made by a New Jersey corresponde 
about the destruction of corn in Connecticut 
blackbirds. Here, the birds attack the corn wh 
it is in the milk and practically destroy eve 
ear that they touch. This they do in part by eati 
the grain, but mainly by stripping away the i 
closing husk and so admitting the rain to t 
grain before it has hardened. The result 
this is a spoiled ear, the corn which remai 
on the cob being unfit for food for domes 
animals. Sometimes they peck a hole in t 
husk at the butt of the ear and do the dama 
low down. 
We have some trouble when corn is bei 
planted by the destruction of the sprouting gra 
but it is generally supposed that this work 
done chiefly—if not altogether—by crows, ] 
which we have far too many. It is certain tl 
occasionally we have to plant our corn a seco 
time, and we know positively that the cro 
accomplish most of the destruction with 
newly planted corn, though we cannot be po 
tive that they do it all. 
I have no doubt that the blackbirds perfo 
useful services by their destruction of noxici 
insects, but just how much of this good wo 
they do we cannot tell. On the other hand 
see with our own eyes a destruction of prope, 
going on in the autumn which certainly mo 
than doubles the cost of a field of corn. If If 
blackbirds would wait until the corn was r:f 
. i 
and then eat what they needed from the riper 
ears, we should not perhaps so greatly obje! 
but when they attack the corn in the milk, son- 
times destroying only three or four inches ale; 
the upper end of the cob, and sometimes del¬ 
ing off the cob down to its very butt, we f 
that there is but one thing for us to do, aj 
that is to destroy the blackbirds. To resolve , 
do this is easy; to actually accomplish it di¬ 
cult, unless a man’s time be wholly devoted : 
