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Turkey species ID
NeoBlackdog
Member Posts: 16,681 ✭✭✭✭
What flavor are these girls? The one has a lot of white on it's lower back and tail but none of the others have that. Is it just an old bird?
Comments
My uneducated guess would be that you have three Butterballs and one Honeysuckle White!
Hey! I said it was a guess!😁 Bob
I should've known better than to ask…
They're just outside of Kalispell, if that helps.
Just as funny - I have looked a 3 links to the either 5 or 6, (depending on who you ask), NA species and they are absolutely no help - because, none of them show the HENS! One example below:
Subspecies of North American Wild Turkey | Outdoor Alabama
https://www.outdooralabama.com/wild-turkey/subspecies-north-american-wild-turkey
NBD, we have a lot of these phase colors on both the Henry’s fork and main fork of the Snake, our local bird enthusiast Bill Scheiss swears the coloration is from interbreeding with domestics.
but there is a Smoke or Ghost phase that shows up occasionally in Merriams and Rio Grandes, which we have both, so not sure if it might not be from just interbreeding.
In the years since they got introduced, I have personally seen birds here locally above 6,500’ in elk habitat
Good stuff, DP. I looked up the ghost phase coloring and that seems to match up pretty good with what I'm seeing, a Merriam's turkey in ghost phase.
just East of Sioux Falls SD on the north side of I90 there is a hay field that has a creek running though it that just about always has a large flock of turkeys in it , yesterday as i was heading back home to WI I came by it about 4:30 or so , there must have been close to 50 birds out feeding with 3 very large Toms all fanned out in the middle of the group
While the hens look like Merriams, the gobbler certainly looks more like the Eastern version found in the MidWest.