Turkey Talk

This is fascinating, as I have always wondered the history of the wild turkeys we see out and about around town if you live in a country setting or near hills and wilder areas. This might answer your questions too!

Talking Turkey

by Susanne Cooper, Former Terwilliger Van Naturalist

They're showing up in the best neighborhoods and they're becoming bolder. But the Wild Turkeys you are seeing didn't invite themselves. They were here before, and we invited them back -- now they're here to stay.

The original West Coast Wild Turkey became extinct around 10,000 years ago, probably because of climate change at the end of the last ice age. No wild turkeys gobbled again in California until the late nineteenth century.

Wild turkeys of various subspecies were first reintroduced to California in 1877, and the Department of Fish and Game started releasing turkeys in California for hunting purposes in 1910. Preferring oak woodlands like those of Marin and Sonoma to any other habitat, the population exploded and quickly spread. Wild turkeys can now be found in almost every open space preserve (and in many residential areas!) in the Bay Area. The Bay Area is a veritable turkey's delight!

The domestic turkey of today came to farms in California after several hundred years of globe trotting. In the early sixteenth century Spanish explorers brought the Aztec's turkey, domesticated from the wild Mexican subspecies, to Europe. Europeans confused this new bird with an African guinea fowl imported through Turkey, and voilà: the name "turkey" was born. When the Pilgrims came to the Americas they brought their gobbling pheasant with them, having no idea that its wild counterparts were already in residence.

Bearded gobblers

The turkey hen is smaller and plainer than the male, only three feet tall and averaging eight pounds. As much as four feet high and weighing up to 25 pounds, a male turkey, aka "tom" or "gobbler," is impressive. And what a sight he is! The fleshy bumps on the turkey's head are called "caruncles." "Wattles" refer to the skin hanging from throat and neck. A "snood" is a flap of skin that hangs over the beak. Turkeys have "beards" or specialized feathers that stick out from the breast, up to nine inches in some males! Even more amusing than these turkey terms are the names given to the sounds turkeys emit-- they gobble, cluck, putt, purr, yelp, cutt, cackle and even kee-kee!

A National Symbol

Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey over the bald eagle as our national symbol. In a letter to his daughter he stated "For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird... though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."