Photo © 2004 by Jim Jung and licensors. All rights reserved.

Wild Turkeys

With their poults grown and their formerly dispersed food of insects and seeds growing scarce, Wild Turkeys - Meleagris gallopavo - form winter flocks to take advantage of concentrated food sources such as acorn and beechnut falls, agricultural spills of corn and soybeans, and overwintering insect concentrations in forests and fields.

There is certainly protection in numbers. After all one hundred alert pairs of turkey eyes are certainly better able to detect a skulking fox or hunting hawk than a single bird alone is able to do. The young are also able to rely on their more experienced elders to show them prime food locations to get them through the coming winter. Come spring and mating time these flocks will disperse as the turkeys fan out to mate and rear their broods.

From our Feature Archive:

• A Short Social History of the Wild Turkey

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