Wild Turkey's

One weekend in February, my family and I took a little road trip to southern Wisconsin.  We saw a ton of wild turkeys on the way there and on the way back.  I could not believe how many we saw!  The first two pictures are from our trip.

 Aren't they cool?

                                          Here are some wild turkeys in the open farm field.

 

This is a group of wild turkeys, also known as a rafter, a gobble and sometimes a gang.

Here's a mother hen and her babies.  A baby turkey is called a Poult.

This is a hen sitting on her eggs.  A mother hen lays up to a clutch of 10-14 eggs, usually one per day, and are incubated for at least 28 days.

A turkey can fly short distances, up to 60 miles per hour, and while they fly, they stay close to the ground.

Aren't they interesting animals?

This is a male turkey.  A male turkey is called a Tom.  Male turkeys are larger than the females, and they have areas of red, purple, green, copper, bronze and gold iridescence on their wings.  The hens have much duller feathers in brown and gray.  Turkey prefer a habitat of open woodland and wooded grasslands.  They are often seen in pastures, fields and nearby orchards.  Turkeys are omnivores.  Meaning they eat both plants and meat.  They will eat acorns, nuts, berries, insects and even visit back yard bird feeders.  They sometimes also eat amphibians and small reptiles such as lizards and snakes, but prefer to search croplands after a harvest for left over seed.  That's what the turkey's we saw this weekend were doing.  They were in the farmers fields looking for corn.  Have you ever seen a wild turkey?

FUN FACT:  Did you know the Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be the national bird instead of the bald eagle?