You can be my witness. I know turkeys fly.
But I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t come by that knowledge until just a few years ago.
I’d lived for years under the false assumption that turkeys have wings but too much weight to use them. And I blame that false assumption on an unforgettable episode of a poorly remembered TV sitcom called “WKRP in Cincinnati.”
The “Turkeys Away” episode aired in October 1978, in the first season of the series.
For those who haven’t left the newsprint to search YouTube, I’ll set the plot: Station manager Arthur Carlson devises a secret Thanksgiving-themed promotion to get everyone talking about WKRP radio. Newsman Les Nessman is dispatched to the scene, a crowded parking lot, to “report” the big happening. A helicopter appears overhead and the anticipation builds. Then the “turkey drop” from the helicopter begins and, as the birds fall, Nessman cries, “Oh the humanity!”
As for Carlson, he confesses, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”
That’s the line I remembered best all these years.
And that’s the line that led me to believe turkeys could not fly.
But it turns out turkeys, including the two species native to Florida, are powerful fliers, reaching up to 55 mph, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The birds generally spend most of their time on the ground, searching for nuts and seeds, fruits and insects, walking as much as several hundred acres in a day.
But wild turkeys are woodland birds and they roost at night in trees.
I’ve seen wild turkeys flying in Manatee and Sarasota counties, including one in west Manatee, a hen with long legs and a long, slim neck. Her coloring appears dull until she fans out her feathers.
I thought she was an anomaly, but Islander readers recently reported seeing wild turkeys in Robinson Preserve in west Bradenton and also Perico Preserve, located east of the Anna Maria Island Bridge on Perico Island.
The sightings seem to be of the Osceola, one of five subspecies of wild turkey in North America and one of two subspecies in the state.
The eastern subspecies is found in the panhandle and the Osceola is found in peninsular Florida and nowhere else in the world.
Wild turkeys are generalists — they don’t require particular vegetation or certain types of food to survive — so they can occur wherever there is forest habitat, according to the FWC.
Research also indicates that climate change, habitat destruction and storms can push wild turkeys to relocate.
In early November, researchers at the University of Georgia Warner School of Forestry and Natural Resources released a report on how hurricanes and other storms uproot the lives of wildlife.
The research focused on Hurricane Michael’s impact after making landfall in 2018 at Florida’s Panhandle. Scientists surveyed the damage to assess the effects of nature’s wrath on sea turtles, sturgeon, beetles and turkeys.
Michael’s winds toppled trees, reducing potential nesting sites for turkeys, making the birds more vulnerable to predators and forcing them to burn more energy with flight.
But, as god is my witness, I’m thankful those turkeys can fly.
Did you know?
Wild Turkeys live year-round in open forests with interspersed clearings in 49 states (excluding Alaska), parts of Mexico, and parts of southern Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada.
Turkeys in northeastern North America use mature oak-hickory forests and humid forests of red oak, beech, cherry and white ash, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
In the Southeast, turkeys live in forests containing pine, magnolia, beech, live oak, pecan, American elm, cedar elm, cottonwood, hickory, bald cypress, tupelo, sweetgum or water ash, with understories of sourwood, huckleberry, blueberry, mountain laurel, greenbrier, rose, wisteria, buttonbush or Carolina willow.
Southwestern birds are often found in open grassy savannah with small oak species.
In Alberta, turkeys live between pinyon-juniper forest and ponderosa pine forest.
This column was published in The Islander newspaper.
Archives for The Islander are online here.