November 2009

It's the time of year that in America, we're all thinking about turkey, even those of us who lack any desire to actually ingest the bird. I suspect that most you you were told, much as I was, that we celebrate Thanksgiving and dine on turkey as a tradition that honors the Pilgrims and the first Credit: Pennsylvania Game CommissionThanksgiving. The birds we dine on, or that most of us dine on, are carefully bred and exceedingly stupid hybrids. They're typically white or buff, and some are dark gray-brown. They don't look much like the native wild American turkey; Meleagris gallopavo silvestris. The picture above is an Eastern Wild Turkey, and and example of the sub-species that the Pilgrims would have seen.

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