Just for the birds: A most wonderful bird — the wild turkey

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. You have all the warmth of a family gathering without the chaos of Christmas, the dress-up requirement of Easter, or the heat, noise, and melted Jell-O of the Fourth of July. I also truly value the idea of being thankful for what you have.

Throw in a football game or two, bare trees rattling outside the windows, a fire in the fireplace, and it's pure joy.

And, oh yeah, food. Well, we always have food in our holidays. In fact, as far as I've read, every holiday in every culture on earth involves a lot of food, no matter the primary reason for gathering. Some evolutionary biologists might argue that food sharing was the most important reason for humans to get together in the very old days, never mind various gods or where the sun was.

But for me, it's not just about any old food. It's about turkey. On other holidays, you can get stuck with a ham, a roast, or even some casseroles. But on Thanksgiving, it's turkey. Look at Norman Rockwell's famous painting, "Freedom From Want." Replace that turkey with anything else, and it doesn't work.

One of my aunts used to prepare an entire Thanksgiving dinner for 14-18 people on a huge, cast-iron, wood stove in a kitchen that was scarcely large enough to contain it. Having cooked a lot of different things myself, I remain amazed that she could pull off bread, baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, beets, extra stuffing, turkey, and pies by tweaking a wood fire. Did I mention turkey?

There is only one species of turkey in the U.S. — the wild turkey — although turkey fans are quick to point out the regional variations in this species. There are six subspecies recognized by the American Ornithological Society. One variety or the other occurs from southern Canada south to about halfway into Mexico.

These subspecies vary mainly in the color of the feathers in the tail, back, and breast. The taxonomy and names are messy and have changed many times over the years. So, I won't try to cover that here. Check them out at birdsoftheworld.org or at the National Wild Turkey Federation website: nwtf.org.

Wild turkeys are not native to Idaho. They were first moved here in 1961, including birds from 10 different states. Not surprisingly, birds from western states with habitats similar to ours did best here.

The only other species in this genus (Meleagris) is the spectacular ocellated turkey, which occurs on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and into Belize and Guatemala. Both turkeys are members of the family, Phasianidae. This is a large group with species all over the world. It includes pheasants, partridges, junglefowl, chickens, Old World quail, and peacocks. All of these species are hunted, and they probably all taste delicious. But I will pass on a Thanksgiving peacock.

Wild turkeys have been popular in North America since before Europeans arrived to take over the continent. Turkeys were the second most common vertebrate found by anthropologists in human refuse collections from that time period. Only evidence of white-tailed deer was more frequent.

Wild turkeys weigh between 5 (small female) and 24 pounds (large male). Because most birds in the Phasianidae are wary and hard to get, it makes sense that an ancient hunter would go after this species rather than a grouse (1-2 pounds) or a quail (1 pound at most). This simple fact makes it even harder to explain chukar hunters! I know. It's the journey, not the destination.

The restoration of wild turkeys in North America is one of the great success stories in wildlife conservation. According to the NWTF, when that organization was created in 1973 there were about 1.3 million wild turkeys. As a result of research and countless conservation projects, there are now around 7 million turkeys — an historically high number.

Early attempts to restore birds into vacant habitat relied on rearing birds in captivity and then turning them loose. This technique mostly failed. A much more successful method has been to capture wild birds and move them. As always, the destination had to have good turkey habitat or that approach wouldn't have worked either. Well over 200,000 turkeys have been moved during the restoration program.

In some places, the program has been too successful. Some local turkey populations have become nuisances. When we lived in western North Dakota, we had friends who had too many turkeys. Two dozen or so birds would roost on the roof of their house, and then noisily run around on that roof and fly off early in the morning before the human occupants were ready to get up. I had other friends who had turkeys roosting in their haystacks, and their droppings would ruin the hay. But those experiences do indeed seem to be local.

Larger issues include how turkeys change the habitat in ways that are harmful to other species. This is a problem in parts of eastern North America where large turkey populations can remove most seeds, acorns, and seedlings from the forest floor. This results in a lack of food and understory vegetation for small birds and other wildlife.

Getting back to what turkeys need, issues in the West include fire suppression — now a familiar issue in Idaho. Fire suppression allows junipers, ponderosa pines, and other woody species to invade meadows and grassy habitats that turkeys prefer for foraging. As the West continues to dry under climate change, the provision of water will become increasingly important if we want to keep turkeys around.

Another issue is the supply of roosting trees. Turkeys originally chose large trees for a place to spend the night. Around here, those trees are apt to be in the riparian zone or on ranches where irrigation water helped grow big cottonwoods. Up higher in the mountains, big ponderosa pines also served well. As these big trees age, die, and fall apart or are cut for firewood, they're lost to turkeys, as well as to cavity nesters like woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, and bluebirds.

Where are turkeys in Idaho? The best way to find out is to ask a turkey hunter. But if she won't tell you, then go to eBird on the internet at ebird.org choose "Species Maps" from the menu, and then choose a date range.

You can zoom in on this map until the large purple rectangles are replaced by blue, teardrop-shaped points. Each of these points is a list of all the birds that someone saw at that spot on a particular date. You'll see they are often reported from along the Payette and Boise rivers, but also here and there in irrigated pastures.

How are they doing? According to the Breeding Bird Survey, wild turkeys have increased by nearly 14% a year over the period 1966-2015 in Idaho. This is a steep rate of increase! But that doesn't mean they're common. Their relative abundance is still only 0.01, which you can compare to that of the American crow (4.76) or mallard (5.06). So, yeah, turkeys are still pretty hard to come by in Idaho.

In addition to loving Thanksgiving and a turkey for that day, I've also been dedicated to traditional recipes. But one recently discovered recipe that blew me away was Pavo Salvadoreño (Salvadoran roast turkey).

You won't find this in a Norman Rockwell painting. But check it out for another day. It's amazing! As for tofurkey? Your call.