Color Phases?

[riverrat56]

I was out cruising around southern MN, down on the Minnesota river bottoms, and came acrossed a flock of about 25 turkeys, out of the 25 6 were half whiteish gray with black feather tips and 2 were all white/cream except for the wing tips and the top of the tail feathers(they were brown), I know color variations happen but i thought this was a little dense of a concentraiton of them, to bad i didn't have the camara, both cream colored birds flew right over the hood of the truck and all the birds flying acrossed the road was neat to see. O btw every single bird was a hen, isn't that kind of weird not to have one tom or jake mixed in?

Anyone have some pictures of color variations?

[Powerstroke]

In my last turkey hunting mag there was an article about these "white" color variations. There was probably an abnormal density of them cause this coloring can be genetic.

DUrin ght e fall and winter turkeys tend to gather in larger groups of birds by sex. Hens are usually in pretty large groups and the toms and jakes will usually hang in groups of around a half dozen but sometimes more depending on how available food sources are.

[big drift]

There is some lightening of feathers by hens during the winter. the same adaptation that occurs with snowshoes, mink , etc. If ya see the same pattern in another month or two then I would suspect a genetic abnormality.

later

big drift

[riverrat56]

bigdrift, i was thinking that might be the case on a few of the birds, but some were completly lacking the normal colors at all, but those 2 birds looked identical, as did the other 4 look like each other.

I wasn't sure if it was genetic or just a random thing, but it makes sense that if it is genetic then you will get higher concentrations than if it was random.

thanks for the info guys.