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 Thanksgiving. 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.

In the wild the Toms, or males, (sometimes called gobblers because they really do sound like they are saying gobble-gobble gobble) are strikingly attractive, with a variety of colored plumage. I"ve seen some incredibly specimens in Maine in New Hampshire that have very definite blue feathers. The females are often a little drab, in comparison to the larger, showier males, but they too are lovely. The males will fan out their tails in a display just the way a male Peacock spreads his tale, though it's not as large. You sometimes see the toms strutting around with their tail-feather fanned out to the fullest extent posible, so much so that they are a little unsteady on their feet. Native turkeys are smart too. Also, they can fly, and they are very very clever about hiding. More than once I've startled a small group and they take off, making an incredible racket as they flee. You are especially likely to startle turkeys into flight in the spring, when you can stumble upon a nest in the New England scrub. Mostly, though, people hear Turkeys long before they see them. The males and the females both make a great deal of noise while eating. They also tend to travel in flocks of at least four or five birds, and sometimes, as many as twenty or thirty. The variety of calls they make sound almost as if they're conversing while dining.

The pilgrims called these very large birds, which were unfamiliar to them, turkeys, because they thought the birds were a species of Guinea Fowl, then often called Turkeys under the mistake assumption that the birds came from Turkey.

For more pictures of Eastern Wild Turkeys, look here and here, and here.