Calling All Turkeys!

On November 28th we video conferenced with the Texas Wildlife Association to learn all about turkeys and American Thanksgiving.  We compared Canadian Thanksgiving with American Thanksgiving. We learned that we have our Thanksgiving in October because it gets colder in Canada sooner.  That means we have to harvest our crops before they do in America. We know it gets colder in Canada because we already have snow. Our friends at the Texas Wildlife Association in America don’t have snow.  Do they get snow?

We also learned a lot about turkeys! Our questions are in typed black, and what we learned is typed in blue:

1. How many feathers do turkeys have?  5000 – 6000 feathers

2. What is that red dangly thing that hangs from a turkey? The snood is the red dangly thing that hangs from a turkey’s nose. The red hangy thing under a turkey’s chin is called the waddle. Turkeys use the waddle to cool off when they are hot. They waddle (shake) it back and forth.

3.  What do turkeys eat?  Turkeys are grain, seeds, and drink water.

4. Where do turkeys live? Turkeys live in Canada and America. We saw on a map that turkeys don’t live where we have built citites.

5. Can turkeys fly? Yes.

6. Does Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving? They sure do.

7. What sounds do turkeys make?  We learned that turkeys can make 28 different calls. We learned 4 of their calls. Watch our video to hear our turkey calls!

8. We learned that male turkeys are called Gobblers or Toms. A young male turkey is called a Jake. Female turkeys are called Yelps, and baby turkeys are called Polts.

9. Yelps sit on their nests for 23 hours a day! That’s a long time.

After our video conference we used the app Phoetic to create a picture that shows and tells what each of us learned.

These are some of our pictures!

We learned a lot about turkeys from the Texas Wildlife Association. Thank you!

Mrs. Cassell and the Busy Bees