Wild turkeys are extremely different from the plastic-sealed birds that people buy in the supermarket.
Unlike domestic turkeys, which are raised to grow up fast and fat and have very short lifespans, the average wild turkey lives about two and a half years and weighs about 17 pounds.
The wild birds roost on trees. They can run as fast as 25 miles per hour. And they can fly, fast, up to 55 miles an hour.
Wild turkeys also don’t normally look like the iconic image we see in pictures: males strutting around with their tail and wing feathers fanned out, framing their bodies, like they are in a parade.
“They don’t actually walk around like that,” St. Johns County Parks Naturalist Kelly Ussia said during a Dec. 10 talk at the Ponte Vedra Beach Branch Library. The only time they strut around like that “all puffed up” is during mating season, she said. “Then they’re just trying to show off.”
A naturalist with the county Parks and Recreation department, Ussia recently began giving hour-long talks at the library once a month. She said she chose the subject of wild turkeys for December because turkey is on many people’s minds during the holidays when it comes to planning the traditional family dinner.
Ussia plans to talk about snakes and alligators in January, estuaries in February and Florida’s endangered species in March.
She began her conversational-style, power-point presentation about wild turkeys by saying that she knows a lot about turkeys, “but I’m not a turkey expert.” She added, “I’m not afraid to say I don’t know,” and that when someone does ask a question that she doesn’t know the answer to, she puts it on her list to find out.
“We do have lots of turkeys around here,” in St. Johns County, she said, because she sees them running around the administrative office building in St. Augustine, where her office is based.
Ussia began her talk with basic facts about turkeys, that they are warm-blooded vertebrates with four-chambered hearts, like humans. Then she told her audience of adults and a few children everything they could want to know about wild turkeys and more.
Florida has one species of wild turkey, which is divided into two subspecies: Eastern and Osceola, which is the subspecies that lives in St. Johns County.
Before Europeans came to North America, the wild turkey population was huge. They declined in number from hunting and habitat takeover by humans after Europeans arrived, but in 1860 there were still more turkeys in Florida than people. During the early 1900s there was a huge decline in Florida, but by 1975 wild turkeys were being managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and now turkeys can be found in all of Florida’s counties, as well as in every state in the United States except Alaska and Hawaii.
Ussia said that wild turkeys are hunted in the Guana River Wildlife Management Area as well as farther south in the county, in Matanzas State Forest. Hunters must apply for a license to be able to hunt them, with restrictions.
The Osceola subspecies thrives in pine flatwoods, oak and palmetto hammocks, wooded swamps and prairies with adjacent roosting trees, she said. “They actually do well in wooded swamps.”
Using photos and videos during her presentation, Ussia described the appearance of wild turkeys. Males, called “gobblers,” are the ones with elaborate tail feathers used during mating. They also have spurs on their strong feet, beards, and “snoods” that hang over their beaks.
Females do not have tails that are as elaborate, most have no beards, they do not have snoods and they are smaller and duller in color.
An adolescent male is called a “jake.” Adult females are called “hens,” and an adolescent female is called a “jenny.” A baby turkey of either gender is called a “poult.”
Wild turkeys eat a diverse diet of acorns, seeds, grasses, fruit and insects.
Ussia played recordings of various turkey calls, which distinctively communicate different messages, including “assembly calls,” “excited yelps,” ‘purrs,” and “gobbles.” Only the males gobble, which they do during mating, and which can be heard up to a mile away.
A female turkey typically lays nine to 11 eggs in a nest on the ground and then after two weeks the chicks can fly up to trees to roost to get away from predators, which include coyotes, racoons, owls, snakes, bobcats, eagles, foxes and hawks.
Turkeys have excellent eyesight, including the ability to see color.
They can also be aggressive toward humans, so never feed or approach them, said Ussia, who ended her talk with the myth-busting fact that Benjamin Franklin never suggested the turkey should be the national bird. “He’d heard that eagles have bad moral character and are too lazy to fish for themselves. He said the turkey is a more respectable bird.”
There were few questions during Ussia’s talk that she couldn’t answer.
But Lee Hunter, who came with his two young grandchildren, had one at the end.
“So, where did the expression ‘you’re such a turkey’ come from?” he asked.
Ussia laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll add that to my list.”
