Eastern Wild Turkey Fight

I have seen Eastern Wild Turkey gobblers almost daily for the past few weeks. While the birds mostly cruise the meadows and woodlands in search of food, they do sometimes engage in some very interesting behavior. In this case two mature gobblers engaged in a fight last Saturday morning, which lasted about 19 minutes. I have seldom seen an encounter as intense as this one. Coy of Country Captures was photographing with me and documented the incident in much greater depth with still images than I did, as I was shooting video. Please visit his blog for a series of posts, which documents this amazing encounter.

I have seen the birds fly at each other and fight by "flogging", on several occasions, but this encounter was much more like a wrestling match, with the birds using their beaks to gain strategic holds, and entwining the necks together to exert leverage on each other.

I did take a few still photographs while the turkeys were locked together and this is a tightly cropped portion of one of the better ones, which shows how they can grasp another birds head.

Mature Gobblers Locked In Combat-Note Snow Flying In Air

Canon 7-D 100mm-400mmL

The specks of snow in the photograph are from the bird's feet scuffling about in the snow cover during the struggle.

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