I know you must be eagerly awaiting the promised head shots for the gobbler beauty contest. The truth is much stranger than I had imagined.
The two new words are caruncle and snood.
See how this tom has a pierced eardrum? He must be deaf in his left ear. The snood is the small growth between his eyes and his beak. It’s just a little thing when he is relaxed, but it grows as long as five inches when he gets excited. The snood will flop over his beak when he struts for hens, or has dominance struggles with other toms. But when he’s hanging around feeling happy it’s not very impressive.
This male has a lovely snood and wattle, the pink sac of flesh hanging under his chin and on his chest. Turkey wattles don’t look like much unless they’re thinking about women.
This turkey has a winning wattle and beard combination. The beard is a modified feather that hangs down to the ground; the hens sometimes have little ones, and adult males take a few years before their beard brushes against the ground.
This turkey doesn’t want to play. His beard, snood and wattles can’t be rated, but he gets the prize for caruncles, the little fleshy red tabs on the blue skin of his neck.
snood –noun
| 1. | the distinctive headband formerly worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England. |
| 2. | a headband for the hair. |
| 3. | a netlike hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman’s hair. |
| 4. | the pendulous skin over the beak of a turkey. |
–verb (used with object)
| 5. | to bind or confine (the hair) with a snood. |
[Origin: bef. 900; ME: fillet, ribbon; OE snōd
]
car·un·cle
| 1. | Botany. a protuberance at or surrounding the hilum of a seed. |
| 2. | Zoology. a fleshy excrescence, as on the head of a bird; a fowl’s comb. |
| 3. | Anatomy. a small, fleshy growth. |
[Origin: 1605–15; earlier caruncula < L: small piece of flesh, dim. of carō (gen. carnis) flesh; for suffix, see carbuncle]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
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