This Turkey Tuesday is about Merriam’s wild turkeys. The scientific name of the Merriam’s wild turkey is Meleagris gallopavo merriami – named in honor of Clinton Hart Merriam, the 1st chief of the U.S. Biological Survey (now the US Geological Survey). Merriam’s wild turkeys were historically a mountain bird of the western US, but they’ve been introduced to a number of states with vastly different landscape types, such as the prairies of South Dakota and even New Zealand. Merriam’s have white to whitish tips on their tail fans, but you see quite a bit of variation as you move about areas where Merriam’s call home – their rump feathers (2nd pic) have a pinkish hue, and their primaries (wing feathers) have more white barring than Easterns and Rio Grandes. Merriam’s live in an incredible diversity of vegetative communities, from ponderosa pine/oak forests, to prairies (3rd and 4th pics) to steep mountainous areas up to 10,000 ft in elevation. Unlike other subspecies, in northern parts of the subspecies range they consistently experience mortality during severe winters with deep snow and intense cold weather. They also will routinely travel many miles from their winter to spring ranges, which I’ve posted about previously. Merriam’s populations appear stable in many areas, but face continuing challenges in other areas related to loss of roost locations, deforestation – even loss of habitat from increases in construction of infrastructure for wind power. The take home is, the Merriam’s wild turkey is quite adaptable and occurs in an incredible diversity of landscapes, but conserving their populations will require prioritizing the vegetative communities where they thrive in the face of competing land uses.
Pic of Merriam’s toms by Josh VanOmmeren.
