Wild Turkey

Meleagris gallopavo

Least Concern · IUCN Red List

LCLeast ConcernOmnivoreForestScrapeHuge · 5.8 kg

What the Wild Turkey sounds like

Sonogram of the Wild Turkey: time runs left to right, pitch bottom to top, and the brighter the mark the louder the sound.
Recorded by Jonathon Jongsma · Call · Afton State Park, Washington County, Minnesota, United States · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via xeno-canto
Sonogram of the Wild Turkey: time runs left to right, pitch bottom to top, and the brighter the mark the louder the sound.
Recorded by Jonathon Jongsma · Song · Richardson Nature Center, Hennepin, Minnesota, United States · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via xeno-canto
Sonogram of the Wild Turkey: time runs left to right, pitch bottom to top, and the brighter the mark the louder the sound.
Recorded by Jonathon Jongsma · Call · Richardson Nature Center, Hennepin, Minnesota, United States · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via xeno-canto

ID tip

An adult male (tom or gobbler) normally weighs from 5 to 11 kg (11 to 24 lb) and measures 100–125 cm (39–49 in) in length. The adult female (hen) is typically much smaller at 2.5–5.4 kg (5.5–11.9 lb) and is 76 to 95 cm (30 to 37 in) long. Per two large studies, the average weight of adult males is 7.6 kg (17 lb) and the average weight of adult females is 4.26 kg (9.4 lb). The record-sized adult male wild turkey, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation, weighed 16.85 kg (37.1 lb), with records of tom turkeys weighing over 13.8 kg (30 lb) uncommon but not rare. Voice: Wild turkeys have many calls: assembly call, gobble, plain yelp, purr, cluck and purr, cluck, cutt, excited yelp, fly-down cackle, tree call, kee kee run, and putt. In early spring, males older than a year old and, occasionally to a lesser extent, males younger than a year old gobble to announce their presence to females and competing males.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

When to see the Wild Turkey

One bar for each month, and every month is filled: this bird is recorded here in all twelve. The wide bar is May, the month with the most records.

Where to see the Wild Turkey

Regular rangeRare visitor

The map shades 13 countries with regular records, and 22 more in a lighter tone where the bird turns up only as a stray. Everything unshaded has no records. Countries are listed below the map.

Recorded as a rare visitor in Taiwan, Colombia, Germany, Argentina, Spain, Thailand, Belgium, Chile, India, Czechia, Italy, Peru, Türkiye, United Kingdom, Portugal, Algeria, Kenya, Madagascar, Panama, United Arab Emirates, Netherlands, Ukraine.

About the Wild Turkey

The wild turkey is an upland game bird native to North America, one of two extant species of turkey and the heaviest member of the order Galliformes. It is the ancestor to the domestic turkey, which was originally derived from a southern Mexican subspecies of wild turkey.

Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Easily confused with

Side by side: Ocellated Turkey vs Wild Turkey

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