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males that have gathered to "strut their stuff." He is also announcing that he can gobble the loudest, or hopes he can.
Hens are drawn to all this talking and display, make their selection and mate with the chosen one. A proud male will copulate with a number of different females each day during the .breeding season. A hen may also mate with more than one Tom. The morality of all this may give pause to some readers, but it makes sense genetically.
Male turkeys have a "breast sponge," a thick mass of cellular tissue which serves as a reservoir of rich oil and fat on which the gobbler draws to supply the loss of energy during the mating season. Tom turkeys are so serious about mating that they don't eat while displaying for the females ( and each other). A turkey is indeed "talking turkey" not only with his gobbling but with his . total attention to the matter of the moment.
After all this, the female goes off by herself to scrape out a shallow nest of dry leaves on the woods floor. There she will lay eight to 10 eggs and incubate them for 28 days. The young, called poults, can run about soon after hatching. At two weeks they can fly short distances to a perch for roosting at night. Toms have no part in this; their time is over until the next proud strutting season in spring.
I'm happy turkeys are back in the woods of Piedmont Virginia. Just remember that the ancestor of your Thanksgiving turkey strutted his stuff in Pre-Columbian Mexico.
John Trott welcomes reader comment at P.O. Box 515, Flint Hill, Va. 22627.
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