Turkey Color Morphs
Smoke is the most common Wild Turkey morph: Biologists estimate 1 in every 100 Wild Turkeys has this muted coloration. A smoke-morph bird looks like its name suggests, with a light wispy gray with graphite and black details along the body, wings, and tail. If you hunt turkeys long enough, it's likely that you'll eventually encounter what appears to be a phenomenon in nature: a wild turkey displaying irregular plumage.
I've been hunting turkeys for 18 years, and I've seen close to a dozen different birds like this, including an all. Rigorously controlled hunting seasons prevent over-harvest of any particular morph. The naturally low frequency of most color variants makes accelerated declines unlikely except in special cases like all-white turkeys.
Rare Color Morphs Of Wild Turkeys: Exploring Smoke, Red, Black, And ...
Whether glossy black, ghostly gray, or cinnamon red, color morphs add diversity to the wild turkey clan. This Turkey Tuesday is about plumage variations, a topic that arises each turkey season as we encounter birds with abnormal feather colors. Wild turkeys have several color variations, those being smoke gray, erythristic (red), melanistic (black), and leucistic (white).
Regional Variations in Wild Turkey Colors There are subtle regional differences in wild turkey feather patterns. Turkeys in the Rocky Mountains tend to have whitish tips to the rump and tail feathers, whereas other populations have rusty or chestnut tail tips. Some rare color morphs like smoke, red, black and white turkeys occur naturally due to genetic mutations.
What Causes Color-Phase Turkeys - The National Wild Turkey Federation
The smoke morph is the most. Domesticated turkeys can vary in color, of course (as is true of many domesticated birds), but the smoke morph occurs naturally in the Wild Turkey population. For some polymorphic species, there is a geographic trend to where the different morphs are most common.
Explore the rare color morphs of wild turkeys, including smoke, red, black, and white these genetic variations create unique beauty in these birds. Here are some of the main colors found in a wild turkey's plumage: Dark brown is the predominant body color on most of their feathers Shades range from chocolate to nearly black Bronze and copper iridescence shimmers subtly across many body feathers, resulting in olive. The smoke morph is the most common, estimated at 1 in 100 wild turkeys.
An interesting color morph of a wild turkey seen in Sax Zim area of ...
The others are exceptionally rare. What Creates the Colors? Wild turkeys get their splendid colors from pigments like: Melanin - Blacks, grays Carotenoids - Reds, oranges, yellows Structural Blue.
