Yeah, but could it open a jar?

Either that is the greatest flying turkey picture of all time, or someone stuck a mounted bird outside on a tree to take the shot. It looks like the label on a bottle of Wild Turkey.

Albatrosses and turkeys both do much more gliding than actual flying. They *can* get airborne from the ground, but they don't like it much. They both take a long, clumsy run to get it accomplished, and neither can really ascend from a standing start by simply flapping their wings, unless they've got a brisk headwind. Albatrosses in particular prefer cliffs where the wind takes an upward course, so they can simply spread their wings and get lifted off of the ground by it.

I once saw a turkey fly over eight lanes of interstate plus the median strip in rush hour traffic at an altitude of about 18-wheeler windshield feet (it was already airborne when I saw it). It flapped its wings about three times across that distance. The landing probably would have been pretty impressive, though, as it was going to occur in a heavily wooded, steeply downsloping piece of terrain.

No, it couldn't. And for the same reason that octopi can't fly.

Somebody TOTALLY nailed a fake turkey to a tree and took a pic.

Okay, I did a quick google search for 'flying turkey' and that was one of the first pictures I saw that looked good enough to post to make my point. I admit I didn't check it out closely at the time. And you're right, it does look kinda hokey now that I'm looking at it again. :o

Just wondering, should it be "aerial" birds'? A roadrunner or ostrich, or the late kiwi maybe I'd vote for being terrestrial, but the rest of them? I'm not too sure... ;)

OK
As a perfessional photogiraffer, I'd stake both your reputations on the veracity of the turkey pic. All flash pictures look fake. especially that one. That one looks especially fake. but it looks so fake that I think it may be real. Then again, it may be frozen. The odd thing is that the head and neck get all red when the bird is excited (my friend had a pet turkey and we'd watch its head go from normal blue to excited red) I doubt it would stay red and excited after the bird was nailed to a tree. Unless of course it was one of "those" kinds of birds, if you get my drift.

Also, we used to live in a place where the turkeys would walk past, and on, our back porch every damn day. 20-30 of them, all ages. Sometimes I'd open the door and startle them. They'd fly helter skelter up into the trees with as much grace as a bulldozer. They'd snap the branches they flew into, bashing anything in their way.

Not twigs, BRANCHES. They are brutes.

A friend of mine worked in a butcher shop during the depression when he was a kid and he told me about the time he had to slaughter a live turkey. He cut off its head and it got away from him IN THE SHOP! The bird flew around for several seconds (must have seemed like a day and a half) covering everyone in the store in blood.

It was the depression, I guess that kind of thing happened w/o lawsuits then.

They fly when they want to.

Foot, good story about the butcher shop! I like your writing style too. Just to clear up the veracity of the turkey picture in question I redid the google search and found the same picture. Low and behold it came from a taxidermy website that had this picture right next to it. This one clearly shows that it is in fact a 'stuffed' turkey nailed to a tree!

Good eye, Bri! :eyeball:

*and we now return you to our regularly scheduled thread topic...

I actually borrowed that term from one of the sites I visited. :) It was used to describe birds that tend to live over/on land and don't have a need to be able to dive, hunt and generally travel via water. So by that token I guess the ostrich would be as terrestrial as the eagle.

I suspected the turkey was stuffed. And now that I look closely at the pic, you can see the board it is mounted to actually nailed to the tree...

Found a live one on turkeys...

[quote=404Error]
Good eye, Bri! :eyeball:[quote]

Of course I have a good eye! i love your pictures (and, you know I do!) Esp. the froggy-bottom ones.

55-60 mph? Criminey...these aren't birds, they're frigging ballistic missiles!

I've seen turkeys go faster than that. Georgia turkeys of course. At my mom's dinner table around the end of November. Lubricated with cranberry sauce. NOT the gelled type. They seem to lose velocity with that kind........... ;) ;)

Thanks 404,
I just need to add this (monty python):

...Owner: The Norwegian Blue prefers kippin' on it's back! Remarkable bird, innit, squire? Lovely plumage!

**** Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

**** (pause)

**** Owner: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its beak, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!

**** Mr. Praline: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised! ...etc.

So, I guess not just Norwegian Blues need to be nailed down.