Winter friendly- This bird was popular on our family farm in southeastern North Dakota. Without a dog or cat to bother the turkeys they would come up to her deck and fly up to the feeders with their feet extended and knock the bird seed out of the feeders and then eat the stuff when it fell on the ground. They roosted in the shelterbelts and you could hear them in the coulees around the farm, especially in the spring when they were trying to get a mate. My mother loved all types of birds and could name them with just the sounds as macular degeneration took her eyesight away. My Mother passed away in April 2016 from Stage 4 lung cancer and Stage 4 COPD and I miss her every day. No matter the struggles she faced, she always had a positive outlook and I hope she instilled that in me.
My intent with these caches along this I-94 route is to share an image and information pertaining to different birds that are common to our state and region. This one I wanted to publish on Thanksgiving for the year 2019 and had to archive my original post as I had forgot a bunch of information and couldn't figure out how to change the font to make it similar. Hope your Thanksgiving was fulfilling and you are feeling blessed. You are looking for a camo preform that will be hanging or sticking. Make sure cap is secure so they continue to be weather proof. Some of these areas are busier than others. Make sure you park off the road and be aware of muggles. Please let me know if maintenance is needed. Please also keep off the ground so these caches can be winter friendly. If you find one of my signature items, it is yours to keep. If you already have found one of my signature items, please leave for someone who has not received one. Please bring your own writing tool. One is provided with the initial placement but you know how that goes.
Grow the Game and please take the time to read the Geocacher's Creed. http://www.geocreed.info/
Wild Turkey-
BASIC DESCRIPTION
Most North American kids learn turkey identification early, by tracing outlines of their hands to make Thanksgiving cards. These big, spectacular birds are an increasingly common sight the rest of the year, too, as flocks stride around woods and clearings like miniature dinosaurs. Courting males puff themselves into feathery balls and fill the air with exuberant gobbling. The Wild Turkey’s popularity at the table led to a drastic decline in numbers, but they have recovered and now occur in every state except Alaska.
Habitat
Wild Turkeys live year-round in open forests with interspersed clearings in 49 states (excluding Alaska), parts of Mexico, and parts of southern Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, Canada. Turkeys in northeastern North America use mature oak-hickory forests and humid forests of red oak, beech, cherry, and white ash. In the Southeast, turkeys live in forests containing pine, magnolia, beech, live oak, pecan, American elm, cedar elm, cottonwood, hickory, bald cypress, tupelo, sweetgum, or water ash, with understories of sourwood, huckleberry, blueberry, mountain laurel, greenbrier, rose, wisteria, buttonbush, or Carolina willow. Southwestern birds are often found in open grassy savannah with small oak species. In Alberta, turkeys live between pinyon-juniper forest and ponderosa pine forest.
Food
Wild Turkeys eat plant matter that they forage for in flocks, mostly on the ground but sometimes climbing into shrubs or low trees for fruits. In fall, winter, and early spring they scratch the forest floor for acorns from red oak, white oak, chestnut oak, and black oak, along with American beech nuts, pecans, hickory nuts, wild black cherries, white ash seeds, and other seeds and berries. When deep snow covers the ground, they eat hemlock buds, evergreen ferns, spore-covered fronds of sensitive ferns, club mosses, and burdock. During the spring they may dig up plant bulbs if nuts are scarce. In late spring and summer, Wild Turkeys strip seeds from sedges and grasses, occasionally supplementing their plant diet with salamanders, snails, ground beetles, and other insects. Like most birds they swallow grit to help digest their food.
Nesting
Wild Turkeys nest on the ground in dead leaves at the bases of trees, under brush piles or thick shrubbery, or occasionally in open hayfields. The female scratches a shallow depression in the soil, about 1 inch deep, 8–11 inches wide, and 9–13 inches long. Wild Turkeys use only the dead leaves or other plant materials already present at the nest site.
Behavior
Wild Turkeys get around mostly by walking, though they can also run and fly—when threatened, females tend to fly while males tend to run. At sundown turkeys fly into the lower limbs of trees and move upward from limb to limb to a high roost spot. They usually roost in flocks, but sometimes individually. Courting males gobble to attract females and warn competing males. They display for females by strutting with their tails fanned, wings lowered, while making nonvocal hums and chump sounds. Males breed with multiple mates and form all-male flocks outside of the breeding season, leaving the chick-rearing to the females, The chicks travel in a family group with their mother, often combining with other family groups to form large flocks of young turkeys accompanied by two or more adult females. Each sex has an independent pecking order, with a stable female hierarchy and a constantly changing male hierarchy. Wild Turkeys are hunted by coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, mountain lions, Golden Eagles, Great Horned Owls, and people. Nest predators include raccoons, opossums, striped skunks, gray foxes, woodchucks, rat snakes, bull snakes, birds, and rodents.
- The Wild Turkey and the Muscovy Duck are the only two domesticated birds native to the New World.
- In the early 1500s, European explorers brought home Wild Turkeys from Mexico, where native people had domesticated the birds centuries earlier. Turkeys quickly became popular on European menus thanks to their large size and rich taste from their diet of wild nuts. Later, when English colonists settled on the Atlantic Coast, they brought domesticated turkeys with them.
- The English name of the bird may be a holdover from early shipping routes that passed through the country of Turkey on their way to delivering the birds to European markets.
- Male Wild Turkeys provide no parental care. Newly hatched chicks follow the female, who feeds them for a few days until they learn to find food on their own. As the chicks grow, they band into groups composed of several hens and their broods. Winter groups sometimes exceed 200 turkeys.