FASCINATING MELEAGRIDS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

A few more turkey points of interest. If you can add extra info on any 
of these points I'd be interested: I'm doing this without the literature.

I've yet to read about this, but turkeys in captivity (at least) use their 
primaries in a strange acoustic display: they scrape the feathers along 
the ground making a loud shhh-shhh-shhh noise. Those that are kept on 
concrete wear down the tips of their feathers so that the distalmost end 
of the feather is horizontal and parallel to the ground, not pointed as in 
an undamaged feather. Female turkeys prefer the males with the 
broadest skulls, though I'm sure vocal prowess, size and condition 
must come into it.

Displaying male turkeys blush, turning from pinkish-red to deep red 
with blue and violet. As they become darker in colour, the wattle that 
hangs from the cere is distended and dangles down below the beak. I 
don't know if other wattle-bearing birds also distend their wattles 
during display.. keep this in mind if you give your hadrosaurs or 
oviraptors wattles.

Turkeys are (so the books say) named because they were originally 
confused with guinea fowl and were thought to originate from Turkey. 
Surely it must be more complex than that. While turkeys were 
obviously not discovered until Europeans settled the New World, there 
is supposed to be a bird that looks just like a turkey (which of the two 
species I'm not sure) in the Bayeaux Tapestry. I seem to remember 
there are feral turkeys in the UK somewhere... (the group is not 
included in Heinzel et al. though, so this hasn't been confirmed).

DARREN NAISH 
PALAEOBIOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP
School of Earth, Environmental & Physical Sciences
UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH
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