article thumbnail

The Domestic Turkey and the First Thanksgiving

10,000 Birds

The very first thing we notice about this large member of the Galliformes is that there is a wild version and a domestic version, and although the two are rather different, they are both given the same species name, Meleagris gallopavo. This is not entirely unknown among domestic animals, but many domesticates have no living wild version.

Turkey 197
article thumbnail

The Nonessential Whooping Crane

10,000 Birds

Over the winter, the universe lost four whooping cranes to what appears to be recreational shooting: three gunned down together in Georgia on December 30, 2010, and another in Alabama on January 28, 2011. Another 170 are in captivity, many of them breeding stock for reintroduction efforts. The big white one. It flies on.

2011 239