A Little Birdie Told Me: Wild Turkey Traditional Cache

This cache is one of a series that will provide a clue for the final, A Little Birdie Told Me Challenge. There are a total of 5 caches, and each has a piece of information needed to locate the Challenge. Visit the whole series for 5 smileys, or just find them as you want.

Turkeys have many vocalizations: "gobbles," "clucks," "putts," "purrs," "yelps," "cutts," "whines," "cackles," and "kee-kees." In early spring, male turkeys, also called gobblers or toms, gobble to announce their presence to females and competing males. The gobble can carry for up to a mile. Males also emit a low-pitched "drumming" sound; produced by the movement of air in the air sack in the chest, similar to the booming of a prairie chicken. In addition they produce a sound known as the "spit" which is a sharp expulsion of air from this air sack. Hens "yelp" to let gobblers know their location. Gobblers often yelp in the manner of females, and hens can gobble, though they rarely do so. Immature males, called jakes, often yelp.

Hens lay a clutch of 10-14 eggs, usually one per day. The eggs are incubated for at least 28 days. The poults leave the nest in about 12–24 hours. Predators of eggs and nestlings include Raccoons, Virginia Opossums, Striped Skunks, Gray foxes, raptors, Groundhogs, other rodents, spotted skunks, rat snakes, Gopher Snakes, and pinesnakes. Predators of both adults and young include Coyotes, Bobcats, Cougars, Golden Eagles and (with the exception of males) Great Horned Owls and red foxes. Humans are now the leading predator of adult turkeys.

The Wild Turkey, throughout its range, is a bird known to have played (and continues to play) a significant role in the day-to-day lives of Native American tribes all over North America. Outside of the Thanksgiving feast, it was a favorite meal in Eastern tribes. Eastern Native American tribes consumed both the eggs and meat, sometimes turning the latter into a type of jerky to preserve it and make it last through cold weather. They provided habitat by burning down portions of forests to create artificial meadows which would attract mating birds (and thus give a clear shot to hunters). The feathers of turkeys also often made their way into the rituals and headgear of many tribes: though separated by hundreds of miles, tribes like the Sioux, the Wampanoag, the Powhatan, and the Hopi all wore turkey feathers in their hair or on their person, with the feather and the bird holding a different significance to the different peoples.