I love spring. The colors, the smell, the sounds of singing birds. After a winter of gray skies, white landscapes and no smells–I just love spring. I am fortunate enough to spend a lot of time running around capturing images of the marvels of spring. The other day I was following a large male (Tom) turkey through the woods. He was on a mission to find any un-breed hens. My mission was to capture his beauty and behaviors. It was then that I was struck by how amazing the chest and wing feathers are on these birds. So I started taking some close up shots of the feathers as he passed through shafts of sunlight deep within the forest.

Feathers are billboards for birds. For the males, the feathers are a huge way to advertize his overall health and ability to sire strong offspring. This is something the females are looking for. So the brighter, more flashy a male feathers the better his overall health. It makes sense that parasites would diminish the coloration of a bird. Parasites will sap the energy of their host, even in humans. I am sure that your family can tell if you are sick or exhausted just by taking one look at you. When tired, you may look pale with a lack of color in your cheeks. The birds are no different, even the turkey.

Domestic chickens are susceptible to a condition caused by coccidia, a group of single-celled parasites that infect the stomach of many birds and mammals. The condition causes the loss of yellow in the skin and in turkeys it causes males to grow feathers with less brilliances and less iridescence when compared to non-infected males. The same infection in Houses Finches and American Goldfinches causes the males to be very pale and lack the orange pigment that makes them bright red in the House Finch and bright yellow in the Goldfinch.

Studies of coccidia infections in birds shows clear evidences that structural and carotenoid-based (which is how turkeys and many other birds are colored) colors are adversely impacted making the bird less brilliant and colorful. Other things such as viruses, bacteria, lice and fleas along with malaria-like blood parasites also have negative impacts on a birds feather colors.

Wild Turkey’s, at least the males, are well known for their amazing colors. Not only do their feathers have iridescences but the bare skin on their heads and necks changes colors. Blood is shunted to and from these areas of bare skin to produce the red, blue and white colors. In addition the size of the snood, waddles and other patches of skin change in size while the male is displaying. Red skin has arterial blood, rich with oxygen, running just below the surface, while the blue skin is showing veinus blood which is depleted of its oxygen. When the skin turns white there is no blood flowing just under the skin to give off a color.

So when you look at a turkey, or just about any other bird for that matter, there is so much more going on visually. Sometimes it’s worth just taking a few moments to study the appearance of our feathers friends. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Facebook.com or Twitter.com or he can be contacted via his web page at www.naturesmart.com