Thanksgiving, Time for a Chat About California Turkeys

The last time I walked my dog in a park near home, we encountered not one but two separate flocks of wild turkeys. Wild turkeys have spread through my region and their populations are booming. It’s increasingly common to see them marching through residential neighborhoods, standing on peoples’ fences or cars, and roosting at night in trees nearby. These are large birds, some of them as big as 20 pounds (9 kilograms), and most flocks seem to have 10-20 birds apiece.

Wild Turkeys vs. Extinct Californian Turkeys

Basically, the wild turkeys have moved in and now call this place home. In my state of California and across the United States and Canada, wild turkeys are acting like they’ve been here all along. And they are native because eating turkeys is part of the Thanksgiving tradition, right? More on that in a moment.

Aside from scratching up the soil and defecating everywhere, wild turkeys do eat a lot of slugs and bugs (such as ticks) that I’d rather not have around. My neighbors haven’t tired of them yet and still like to watch and take pictures when the turkeys come through, often stopping traffic on one of the larger roads. But my dog has a different view; he classifies them as invasive creatures and routinely chases away turkeys when we pass a group of them on the street or in a park. When he gets to close to a turkey and it opens up its wings to flap, though, my dog usually backs off because he’s small enough to know he might not win that fight.

These turkeys are not native to California; they have come here from the south and from the east. California’s only species of wild turkey (appropriately called the Californian turkey) is extinct. There is a skeleton of one in the museum at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. The ancient species was heavy with a short, wide beak. These turkeys lived in the Pleistocene and early Holocene periods, but then they disappeared. Hunting by the humans who first settled North America may well have driven them to extinction.

The extinct Californian turkey, a skeleton at the La Brea Tar Pits. Creative Commons via Wikimedia.com by Sarah Murray.

But don’t tell the turkeys in my neighborhood that they are not native turkeys.

Strange Relationship

Overall, Americans have a weird relationship with these birds. On the one hand, many towns and neighborhoods now play host to these wild turkeys which have spread and established populations in much of North America. Some love them and some hate them. On the other hand, I could walk from the park where I saw this flock to a supermarket, and in that supermarket they are selling turkey meat. There is whole turkey, roasted turkey, frozen turkey, and even canned dog food that includes turkey as an ingredient.

In the United States, Thanksgiving is often referred to as ‘Turkey Day’. Turkey is the centerpiece dish; many farm- or factory-raised turkeys are slaughtered each year and transported hundreds of miles so that home chefs can prepare their own delicious turkey recipes for this annual family gathering. Yet those same home chefs step outside with their cell phones to snap pictures of the flocks of “wild turkeys” that walk through their neighborhoods.

Very few would apply for a hunting license to harvest a turkey from the wild; in this state a licensed hunter who complies with regulations can harvest up to three birds during a spring season that lasts just a few weeks. I don’t think anyone hunts them in residential areas. Just like my dog says, the turkey meat from the grocery store is easier to handle.

All Turkeys Originated in Mexico

Are they really the same turkeys in both refrigerators and yards? The species is the same. Turkeys are native to the Americas, but the “wild turkeys” that also became domesticated spread through the southwest and into the eastern United States from Mexico. It was only more recently that we started seeing so many of them where I live on the west coast. The domesticated birds are bred for certain characteristics, such as being large and fat, so they probably have some differences but are the same species as the wild turkeys.

The Pleistocene fowl known as the Californian turkey went extinct a long time ago. And today, there are two species of turkey in the world. One is a jungle turkey fowl that lives in Mexico. And the other, the kind that we have domesticated and also allowed to spread as wild turkeys, actually originated in Mexico also. And their spread probably owes more to their domestication and human-assisted spread along the way than it does to a natural range expansion.

So all present day turkeys originated in central Mexico. And most are considered the same species as the domesticated turkey.

The Mayans knew turkeys and used them for meat. Turkeys were one of the earliest domesticated livestock species in the Americas. And as they were exported from Mexico to Europe and elsewhere, there must have been some confusion about their origins. Historical and literary references (including Shakespeare) referred to “turkey cocks” or “turkey hens”, perhaps believing mistakenly that these were related to guinea fowl that were brought from the country of Turkey. And over time, the name “turkey” stuck.

Turkeys and the Thanksgiving Tradition

Was turkey meat served at the first Thanksgiving? Some historians say no, but about 20 years after the first Thanksgiving harvest meal was celebrated by the early colonists who arrived from England on the Mayflower, William Bradford wrote about it in a history called Of Plymouth Plantaion. In this account, he claimed that “there was a great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many.” So turkey certainly could have been a menu item.

Plenty of today’s American diners will not be using traditional gravy or cranberry sauce with their Thanksgiving turkey meals, but perhaps salsa, kimchi, sauerkraut, sriracha sauce, curry, or harissa. If you go back a few generations, animals or people, then most of us would qualify as immigrants. The (only real) native California turkeys knew this, since they may well have been hunted to extinction by the first Native Americans, who arrived here from Asia via the Siberian land bridge and/or boats.

So while millions of Americans eat turkey to celebrate the Thanksgiving feast and verify their Americanness, the wild turkeys continue to strut through the neighborhoods as if they have been here even longer. And in the end, it doesn’t matter where your ancestors came from or when you arrived. For the people and animals who are here, home is home.

References:
http://mayflowerhistory.com/thanksgiving/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_(bird)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californian_turkey
https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/hunting/upland-game-birds

Images are public domain unless otherwise indicated.