SOCIAL RELATIONS--NESTING--THE YOUNG BIRDS
The wild turkey differs in its domestic relations from the majority
of birds, for it does not take one partner or companion, or pair off
in the spring, as do most gallinaceous birds. Charles Hallock has
stated that turkeys pair off in the spring. I beg to differ with Mr.
Hallock. The male turkey does not confine himself to one mate.
He is a veritable Mormon or Turk, polygamous in the extreme, and
desires above all a well-filled harem. He cares not a bit for the
rearing or training of his family; in fact, it has been alleged that
he follows his mates to their nests and destroys and eats the eggs.
This I do not believe, nor will I accuse him of such conduct. He is
a vain bird and craves admiration, and acts as if he were a royal
prince and a genuine dude, and he will have admiration though it
costs him his life. He is a gay Lothario and will covet and steal his
neighbors' wives and daughters; and if his neighbors protest, will
fight to the finish. He is artful, cunning, and sly, at the same time
a stupendous fool. One day no art can persuade him to approach you,
no matter how persuasively or persistently you call; the next day he
will walk boldly up to the gun at the first call and be shot. He has
no sentiment beyond a dudish and pompous admiration for himself, and
he covets every hen he sees. He will stand for hours in a small sunny
place, striving to attract the attention of the hens by strutting,
gobbling, blowing, and whining, until he nearly starves to death. I
believe he would almost rather be dead than to have a cloudy day,
when he is deprived of seeing the sun shining on his glossy plumage;
and if it rains, he is the most disconsolate creature on the face of
the earth.
[Illustration: Nest located in thick brush on top of a ridge in
Louisiana]
The methods employed by the wild turkey hen in nesting and rearing
a family do not differ materially from those of the tame turkey.
The nest itself is a simple affair, fashioned as if made in a
hurry, and consists of a depression scratched in the earth to fit
her body comfortably, then a few dry leaves are scratched in to line
the excavation. Again, the nest may be under an old fallen treetop
or tussock of tall grass, or beside an old log, against which sundry
brush, leaves, and grass have drifted, or in an open stubble field
or prairie. There is one precaution the hen never neglects, however
slovenly the nest is built; this is to completely cover her eggs with
leaves or grass on leaving the nest. This is done to protect them
from predaceous beasts and birds, particularly from that ubiquitous
thief and villain, the crow.
The eggs, usually from eight to fifteen in number, are quite pointed
at one end, a little smaller than the eggs of the domesticated
turkey, showing considerable variation in size and shape. In color
they are uniform cream, sometimes yellowish, and, when quite fresh,
with a decided pink cast, spotted and blotched all over with reddish
brown and sometimes lilac.
The period of incubation is four weeks. On its first appearance
the young wild turkey is covered with a suit of light gray fluffy
down, dotted with dusky spots, and with two dusky stripes from the
top of the head, down the sides of the back to the rump; but this
is soon replaced by a covering of deciduous feathers, and this in
turn by the permanent suit at molting in August and September. The
first crop of feathers which takes the place of the down grow very
rapidly, assuming in their maturity the precise shape and color of
the subsequent and permanent growth, and at three months the turkey
is in appearance the same as one of nine months. The young bird
of two or three pounds weight has the same outline of form as the
yearling, but the little fellow in down bears a striking resemblance
to a young ostrich. The deciduous feathers mature quickly, and the
quill-ends dry before the young bird is a quarter grown; hence the
feathers grow no more. But the bird grows until molting-time arrives,
when the young fowl, if a gobbler, will weigh from seven to nine
pounds. The molting season comes on apace, and the bird is out of
humor; for its clothes, as it were, do not fit, the mosquitoes and
ticks bite it, and the deciduous quills of the wings begin to get
loose and drop out, one at a time at long intervals, so that some
feathers are growing while others are falling. This is also true of
the body covering. The tail becomes snaggled and awry, and at the
time the young turkey presents anything but a pleasing appearance.
The molting begins in August, and it is the last of December before
the full second suit of feathers is completed. It is the irregular
growth of the feathers that often deceives the hunter as to the age
of the fowl. Once a friend of mine and I, after a morning's hunt,
stopped to rest and got into our boat. He had three fine turkeys, the
time being early in November, and he remarked that he wished he had
killed at least one gobbler to put with his hens. On examination I
showed him that two of his three were young gobblers and the third an
old hen, although the birds were about the same size and the plumage
almost identical.
The tuft or beard does not appear on the young gobbler even in the
Southern climate until late in October or November, nor have I known
them to gobble or strut at this early age, although the tame ones
sometimes do. The gobbler's beard grows quite rapidly until the end
of the third year, and then slowly until eleven or twelve inches
long, when it seems to stop. It may be owing to its wearing off at
the lower end by dragging on the ground while feeding; but a close
inspection will not substantiate this, for the hairs at the extreme
end of the beard are blunt and rounding, and do not indicate wear
from friction. The young gobbler's beard is two inches long by the
end of November of the first year of his life. By March it is three
inches long and stands out of the feathers one inch. At the end of
the second year it is five inches long, and at three years about
eight inches long.
[Illustration: Hen, wild turkey, and three young. On account of
the extreme shyness of the mother, young turkeys are very hard
to photograph]
Hens have beards only in rare cases, but not in one out of a hundred
will a hen be found with one and then never more than four inches
long. I have seen gobblers with two or three beards, and one at
Eagle Lake, Texas, with five separate, long and distinct beards; but
such cases are freaks. I once called up and killed a turkey hen on
the banks of the Trinity River, in Texas, which was covered with
precisely the same bronze feathers that distinguish the gobbler--the
same thick, velvety black satin breast, and the same beautifully
decorated neck and head, except the white turban cap of the gobbler.
She had a five-inch beard and looked in every way like a gobbler,
except being smaller in size. She weighed twelve pounds and had the
form of the hen, the legs of a hen, and was a hen, but the most gaudy
and beautiful specimen I ever saw. Possibly this was a barren hen, as
she had all the visible characteristics of the male, but she did not
gobble, she yelped.
The parasite which troubles the turkey is much larger than those
which infest chickens. It is yellow in color and crawls rapidly.
Turkeys have a habit of rolling themselves in dust and ashes to
remove vermin from the skin and feathers; but I believe a bath of dry
wood ashes, where an old log or stump has been burned, is preferred
by them on account of the cleansing effect of the ashes.
When the young turkeys are four or five months old they are fairly
independent of their mother, and become quite self-reliant, so far
as roosting, feeding, and flying into trees is concerned. They are
not, however, entirely independent of their mother's care until fully
grown, but usually the entire brood remains under her guidance more
or less until December or January. At this time the young males begin
to follow the ways of the old gobbler, separating from the females
and going in bands by themselves; therefore there are at this time
three classes of turkeys socially (if I may use the term) in the same
district. These flocks will incidentally meet, and will feed and
scratch together for an hour or so; they then separate into their
respective classes and disappear in different directions with great
system and little ado.