The male has dark iridescent feathers overall, red wattles on the throat, and a dark tuft suspended from the breast. The female is duller than the male, lacks wattles, and often lacks a breast tuft. Males measure 46 inches from beak tip to tail tip; females measure 37 inches. A long neck, featherless blue head, strong spurred legs, and a fan-shaped tail.

Distribution

The eastern wild turkey is found in hardwood and mixed forests from New England and southern Canada and northern Florida in the east to Texas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota in the west. It has also been successfully transplanted in states outside of its orginal range including: California, Oregon and Washington.

Behavior

The social behavior of the species is highly complex. During the nonbreeding season, adult males form their own bands. Adult females and their male and female offspring stay together in separate bands, which sometimes come together in flocks numbering more than 200 birds. Within flocks, dominance hierarchies prevail, separately for males and females; hierarchies within male flocks show rankings by group as well as by individual.

Sex-segregated flocks break up and courtship begins in late January in the southern states, and in late February in the north. At this time, individual males or small bands of males associate with about four females (often called “harems”); females leave the group after copulation to nest alone. Meanwhile, subordinate males in bands frequently engage in copulation attempts with inanimate objects, most often with deposits of dried cow dung.

The female Wild Turkey creates the nest, which is a wide, shallow depression on the ground. Clutches generally include about 10 to 12 eggs, with fewer eggs on average in the southern reaches of the species' range. Upon hatching, Wild Turkey chicks (young turkeys are commonly called “poults”) can walk and run within 24 hours. The hen and her brood remain together for about a year, whereupon male poults leave to join independent male bands.

Diet

The diet of Wild Turkeys consists mostly of seeds, nuts, and buds, but they also consume insects, insect larvae, snails, and small amphibians and reptiles. Diet varies by season and region; in much of their range in fall and winter, they tend to eat mostly acorns. Wild Turkeys forage on the ground in flocks, scratching at the ground with their feet. Wild Turkeys swallow their food whole; they also consume much grit, which helps grind food in the bird's gizzard.

Habitat

Wild turkeys nest on the ground usually in hardwood or mixed-forested stands at the base of trees or logs, under brush or slash piles, in thickets of briars or downed trees and branches. However, hens willalso readily nest in hayfields, unmowed utility right-of-ways, old fields or “rough areas” and idle fields of weeds or grass.

Wild turkeys roost mainly in trees, except when the hen is incubating and until the young poults are old enough to fly up into trees. Hens with young poults (< three weeks old) roost on the ground under large trees in forests with dense understory of young trees and shrubs, downed trees, rock outcrops and brushy vegetation. Good roost habitat is comprised of mature, open-crowned trees that have a trunk diameter of 14” or greater and have fairly horizontal limbs. Mature hardwoods, pines, spruces, cypress and cottonwoods provide good roosting cover. Conifers are used quite often in winter and inclement weather because they provide more thermal protection than deciduous trees.