Connected to the Soil

 NATURE NOTES
WILD TURKEYS in WINTER   Meleagris gallopavo sylvestris
To survive winter, their most critical time of year, wild turkeys need to find sufficient food
during the day and protective roosts at night. As day breaks, each flock of
wild turkeys glides down from its overnight roost, where it has been protected
from predators and sheltered from wind and snow and ice, and begins its daily search
for food.
Scratching down through the snow, turkeys find a wide variety of food on the ground, such
as acorns, nuts and seeds. They will also climb low shrubs for frozen berries and nutritious buds.  
A winter flock may consist of adult hens with their daughters of the year (jennies); juvenile males (jakes); or
adult males (toms or gobblers). If food is particularly scarce, the individual flocks may group together. In spring,
flocking behaviour changes when gobblers join the hens to form large groups in the mating season. In 2 to 3
weeks the breeding season begins and flocks change again. Each breeding flock has 2 or 3 adult gobblers and
      5 to 15 hens. Only the dominant gobbler gets to mate with the hens.   
          Other bunches of young jakes stay separate from the mating groups.
        Hen turkeys seek out secluded spots to scrape out a depression in dead   
        leaves or other vegetation on the ground. Here they lay from 4 to 17   
        buffy white eggs marked with tiny reddish spots. The downy chicks are   
        able to follow the mother within a few hours of hatching. Foxes, bobcats  
            and great horned owls may prey on nesting hens. Eggs may be eaten by    
        foxes, bobcats, owls, minks, raccoons, crows and squirrels. Males do not
        provide parental care.
      Wild turkeys disappeared from Ontario in the early 1900s due to habitat loss  
      and hunting pressure. Originally they were probably never found farther eas