The Lone Turkey in Our Back Yard

We have this lone wild turkey who hangs out in Sena’s backyard garden. I’m going to refer to it using male pronouns because I think it’s a jake, which I think is proper lingo for young male turkeys.

We saw 4 or 5 turkeys last year traipsing through the yard. I think the winter was hard on the small flock and this guy is the only one who survived.

I’m going to call him Jake for now until somebody corrects me about the gender and thinks of a cooler name. The hens usually have bluish-gray heads and are smaller. Jake’s head has a lot of red in it. He also has a couple of spurs on his legs and I think hens usually don’t. I used this website for general guidance.

You can’t say “never” or always” about the characteristics of male and female turkeys. I see web references that say hens can have beards, which are those hairy things stuck to their chests.

One thing that confuses me is the guidance about the tips of the breast feathers, which says they’re always black on males and brown on females. Almost everything about Jake says he’s male except for the feather tips you see in the video while he’s preening. They look brown.

Jake has a horn on the front of his head, which will eventually become the snood, which is a wormy-looking kind of appendage that dangles off the front of the heads of male turkeys.

Males usually strut, but I think Jake doesn’t because he’s alone and doesn’t have a reason to strut, which is to compete for dominance with other males. There are no other males.

It’s a little unusual for turkeys to be loners. I don’t know if there’s a clear explanation for why some turkeys are loners. I think it’s fairly common for hens in the breeding and nesting season to be solitary.

We saw a big flock of turkeys last year in the back yard of a previous neighbor. They evidently all hopped over their fence and then acted like they couldn’t figure out how to jump back out. I made a YouTube video of it because it was comical.  

I don’t know how Jake will find another flock to join.