Less than three weeks until Thanksgiving, and many of us are already deep into culinary conundrums involving brining, basting and bickering about the merits of pecan versus pumpkin pie.
The turkey is indigenous to the Americas, which, of course, Ben Franklin knew, inspiring him to suggest it as our national bird (the Bald Eagle won, however). The bird seems to embody America’s own dysmorphia. On the one hand, being called a turkey, jive or otherwise, stings — yet the big (and getting bigger every year) bird is America’s centerpiece for our annual meal of national gratitude.
The wild turkey, with no reference to Hunter S. Thompson, is still extant here. In many regions of our country, they gather in great rafters or flocks, bobbing over the countryside in a wave-like formation thrillingly recreated in the leggy velociraptors of “Jurassic Park,” perhaps suggesting the distant reptilian roots of the Meleagris gallopavo silvestris.
The comparison parallels another concerning what the original inhabitants of our continent called huehxōlō-ti. or guajolote, or more recently pavo, compared to what we are likely to encounter at the end of a fork this holiday season. The native turkey was considered good eatin’ by our forebears, so much so that the wild turkey was deified.
Archeologists have discovered turkey bones enshrined in sacred Mesoamerican burial sites, distant and separate from ordinary household remains and waste. However, in terms of bulk, the fast, wiry birds that the pre-contact Maya, Azteca and Toltec nations likened to precious jade, calling the bird “the Jeweled Fowl,” would have been some mighty slim pickins compared with that soybean- and corn-fattened 50-pound Butterball waiting in many a freezer at the moment, with far fewer leftovers.
If the male’s showy tail and accompanying courtship display have you wondering, the turkey is indeed related to the peacock. In Mexico, the peacock is called “pavo real“— king’s turkey.
There apparently are a fair number of vegans among this column’s readership, unsurprisingly. Those readers, in particular, may be especially horrified to learn that the modern factory-farmed turkey often literally cannot stand: Its super-engineered breast pulls it down beak-forward off its feet, like an over-implanted drag-queen on tipsy kitten heels. This often means that Presidentially pardoned or otherwise rescued turkeys are not healthy enough to live much past Thanksgiving, even if they manage to dodge Ye Olde Chopping Block.
In terms of the commercial bird, there’s plenty of white meat and dark meat, not to mention the parson’s nose, to go around. But the ancestral bird isn’t doing so great in the wild, according to some wildlife authorities. It has to do with global warming and what’s called green-up, or the arrival of spring.
Dr. Wesley Boone, a postdoctoral research scholar at North Carolina State University, reported in a recent study published in Climate Change Ecology that because green-up is now arriving earlier than in centuries past, there’s less turkey-nesting going on.
Turkeys have a rep for being kinda dumb, certainly compared with, say, the Corvidae. Farmers report that young turkeys sometimes will drown in a rainstorm because they lean back and open their yappers wide to drink, forgetting to close them up. Karen Davies, author of “More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual and Reality,” recounts that for more than a century and reaching into the early 1900s, in the days when refrigeration and trucking were scarce out in the western territories, livestock owners would herd thousands of domesticated turkeys en masse, on foot, from farm to market. A problem frequently encountered during those Texas turkey trots: turkeys are hard-wired to roost at dusk, even the false dusk of a covered bridge or other source of shade.
Bird-brain IQ notwithstanding, Boone and his team have determined that turkeys can count. They can measure the length of the days, and for millennia, longer days have signaled the green-up. Increased daylight gets turkeys in the mood to mate. But here’s the thing: now that the thaw is coming earlier, germination begins earlier, even though the days are still short, and this, in turn, triggers the life cycle of the insects that poults (young turkeys) feast on.
When the caterpillars and other edible critters are out and about while the poults are still no more than a gleam in Mama and Papa’s eye, the insect life cycle has already peaked by the time the eggs hatch. Earlier springs also affect familiar and favorite songbirds, including robins and cardinals, in the same way. This acceleration of the annual green-up is generally accepted as the primary cause of an 18 percent decline in the wild turkey population across the USA. However, they are still legally and vigorously hunted.
The Bird Is the Word
And speaking of bird population, December 14th marks the 79th year of participation for the Pasadena Audubon Society in The Christmas Bird Count (CBC for short), or annual bird census. The CBC is the world’s longest-running citizen science project, involving thousands of birders in more than 20 countries worldwide. The CBC now celebrates 125 consecutive years of collecting priceless avian data. Our local chapter’s designated birding area is a 15-mile diameter count circle, roughly bounded by Occidental College to the west, Legg Lake to the south, Santa Fe Dam to the east, and Mount Wilson to the north. There’s a map and the handy eBird app to help guide you.
For newbies, you’re welcome to attend the CBC orientation at the chapter’s monthly meeting at Eaton Canyon Nature Center on Wednesday, December 11th, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM. If you miss the meeting, email CBC Count Circle Coordinator Jon Fisher at [email protected] for an update and further directions.
And now’s the time to snap up your tickets to the Christmas Bird Count Dinner, Saturday, December 14th, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM at Eaton Canyon Nature Center. The meal will be catered by Domenico’s Italian Restaurant, and attendees are encouraged to bring a batch of their favorite cookies (store-bought is just fine) for the dessert table. Fisher will conduct the species rally, and a few lucky birders will take home cool, new Pasadena Audubon Society raffle merch.
And by the way, speaking of giving native fauna indigenous props, we salute the Pasadena Audubon Society for its participation in the “Bird Names for Birds” initiative. This project will replace proper names, meaning the surnames of people, with simple descriptors that identify the animal. More than 100 birds in North America are named for the naturalists who “discovered” them…except that they were already discovered.
The attachment of personal surnames to North American animals is a recent phenomenon, and it’s akin to saying that De Soto “discovered” the Mississippi River. Eons of habitation along the banks of the Mighty Miss would suggest that people had discovered it somewhat earlier — the National Park Service suggests that human beings were living along the Mississippi between eight and 12 thousand years ago.
The intent of this project is not merely to undo old damage but to set a new and just path forward. Among the voices heard is that of Matthew Halley, who ruffled feathers in 2019 by reminding bird-watchers and the scientific community at large that prominent naturalists, including John James Audubon, John Kirk Townsend, Charles Bendire and William Bartram, were body-snatchers and slave owners. Another, John Porter McCown, for whom McCown’s longspur was named, was a Confederate general. Other birds carry common names, such as those of sports teams, that bear the residue of racism. For example, the “Oldsquaw” was renamed “Long-Tailed Duck” by the American Ornithological Society in 2000.
The Linnean nomenclature was not as egocentric. For instance, the roadrunner, a favorite in our office, is formally called Geococcyx, meaning “earth-cuckoo” because it is flightless and earthbound. And here again, we must reference our friends at Pasadena’s Parson’s Nose Theater. If you’ve studied human anatomy, you know that the coccyx references your tailbone. Breaking it is extremely painful.
But the Greek term coccyx literally refers to the cuckoo family of birds (Cuculidae in Latin, named for the call of the common cuckoo) because the triangular arrangement of the last three or four bones in the tapering tip of the human spinal column supposedly resemble the beak of the cuckoo, at least to some ancient anatomist’s eyes.
So Latin and Greek descriptors are a step in the right direction, ethically speaking. However, fewer and fewer people read these languages, so the “Bird Names for Birds” initiative will put it all into plain English. Yes, it can be argued that English is as imperialistic and colonial as Latin and Greek are elitist. The only truly egalitarian alternative may be glyphs, taking a cue yet again from the ancients.
This week’s pets in need of homes:
Click on photos to see larger images and captions.
I know of no one who can rival Victoria Thomas at packing varied and interesting– loosely related, even–facts into my old head and making the experience throughly enjoyable! Thanks!
Absolutely agree, Leah. Great article, Victoria! And thanks for the …plug?