Page:Bird-lore Vol 03.djvu/205

 A Bird of the Season BY C. WILLIAM BEEBE. Assistant Curator of Birds, New York Zoological Society Illustrated hy the author ONE of the finest and rarest bird exhibits in the New York Zoologi- cal Park is in the dense thicket of trees and tangled undergrowth in which the flock of Wild Turkeys find a perfectly congenial home. The three hens and the pompous and iris-plumaged old gobbler are as much at home as if in the depths of their native forests in Virginia. They are more easily observed in winter than in summer, on account of the thick growth of sumach, sassafras and grape-vines which has been allowed to MALE WILD TURKEY AT THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK grow up in their enclosure, but any time one or more of the Turkeys may be seen scratching among the dead leaves or roosting on some high limb. All of the hens have nested and laid eggs, but two factors have made the raising of the young birds a matter of great difficulty, up to the present. One of these is a liver disease which has killed a number, and for which no treatment has thus far been successful. Wet weather is the second enemy from which the newly-hatched chicks have suffered, the slightest wetting during the first two or three weeks after hatching proving fatal. Last year a raccoon climbed into the inclosure and killed seventeen young chicks in a single night, but was captured later, and as a penalty suf- fers imprisonment for life. This year, perhaps, as a result of the knowledge obtained from costly experience, better success has attended the efforts at ( 190)