The Wild Turkey is Michigan's biggest comeback story on two legs. Market hunting and forest clearing wiped turkeys out of the state by the early 1900s; reintroductions beginning in the 1950s took hold so thoroughly that flocks now strut through farm fields, oak woods, and more than a few subdivisions in every region of the state.
A tom in spring display — tail fanned, body feathers puffed into iridescent bronze armor, face wattles flushed red, white and blue — is one of the great sights in Michigan nature, usually accompanied by a gobble that carries a mile. Despite the lumbering look, turkeys run at 20 mph, fly powerfully for short bursts, and roost high in trees at night.
Acorns and nuts scratched from the forest floor, plus seeds, waste grain, berries, and insects — grasshoppers are a summer favorite and the main diet of young poults. Flocks patrol harvested fields through fall and winter.
Completely — extirpated by about 1900. Modern flocks descend from birds reintroduced starting in the 1950s, one of the most successful wildlife restorations in state history.
Well — just briefly. They burst into flight at need, hit 40–50 mph over short distances, and fly up to tree roosts every evening. The turkey that can't fly is the domestic one.
Usually a tom in spring that has lost its fear of humans, often through feeding. Stand tall, don't back away, open an umbrella, and stop any feeding — bold turkeys are made, not born.
Yes — Wild Turkeys are present in Michigan in every month of the year. Numbers stay fairly steady from month to month. Birds are easier to detect in the breeding season, when they are singing and displaying, so a quiet winter month can feel emptier than the population actually is.
Poults. They leave the nest within a day of hatching, feed themselves on insects, and can flutter up to roost in trees at about two weeks old. A hen with a strung-out line of poults is a common Michigan summer sight.
A rafter, or simply a flock. Winter flocks segregate by sex — hens and young birds in one group, gobblers in another — and break up as the spring display season begins.
Other birds you might be looking at instead.
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