And what about the origin of the name of the USA? Feedback We've Added New Words! Word of the Day. Meanings Meanings. Previous "Cost" vs. What is a turkey? How are the Turks connected to a North American bird? The record-sized adult male wild turkey weighed in at Here in Britain the male is called a stag and the female a hen.
Adult wild turkeys have long, reddish-yellow to grey-green legs, with feathers being blackish and dark, usually with a coppery sheen.
Males have a large, featherless, reddish head and throat, with red wattles on the neck. The head also has fleshy growths called caruncles and a long, fleshy protrusion over the beak, which is called a snood. When males become excited, the fleshy flap on the bill expands and the wattles and bare skin of the head and neck all become engorged with blood, almost concealing the eyes and bill.
The tail becomes erect and fan-shaped, and the glossy bronze wings are drooped and held slightly out from the body, creating a very impressive sight. Despite their huge size and weight, wild turkeys are not bad at flying and gliding, not only to get away from danger but also to go up to roost in trees.
Their ideal habitat is open woodland or wooded pastures and scrub. History Magazine These 3,year-old giants watched over the cemeteries of Sardinia. Magazine How one image captures 21 hours of a volcanic eruption. Science Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants.
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See how people have imagined life on Mars through history. When the Spanish arrived in Mexico in the 16th century they encountered the already-domesticated common turkey, Meleagris gallopavo.
They apparently liked the bird; turkeys were among the plunder they took back to Spain around By , the birds had arrived in England. The English gave the Turks credit for any number of new imports: maize was Turkish wheat , and pumpkins were Turkish cucumbers —though both were actually New World plants. So the new bird was soon being called a turkey-cock, eventually shortened to turkey.
Then the turkey—imported from Mexico by the Spaniards and transported to England—was reintroduced to the New World, arriving in eastern North America in the s. The forests of the northeast were already populated with wild turkeys, but the forerunner of the turkey that we roast is the European-bred-but-originally-Mexican bird. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!
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