If you’ve lived in the Bay Area for more than one minute, you’ve likely seen a flock of turkeys wandering around. Since it’s officially Turkey Day, we thought hit was a good idea to look into why these wild creatures are so plentiful in our region.

A couple years ago, our former editor-in-chief Keith Spencer looked into this question and found out that turkeys are actually relative newcomers—at least it’s new just how common they are to spot.

Alan Krakauer, a UC Davis biology professor who specializes in the behavioral ecology of birds, told TBI that the turkeys were brought back to California in the mid-20th century.

Originally, these turkeys were brought for hunting at private hunting clubs and on state-managed lands… it’s been sort of a continued population growth from that time, from the 1950s to the 1980s, when these releases were happening.

Apparently, wild turkeys “love all the open space in the Bay Area”:

Native Bay Area residents might wonder whether the turkeys are technically transplants. “It’s a contentious issue: whether to call turkeys in California ‘native’ or ‘introduced,’” said Dr. Krakauer. Turkeys have certainly been in California before. Wild turkeys are one of the most common fossils found in the La Brea tar pits and were present in Southern California in the Pleistocene. But “most of the introduced ones here were brought from the Texas or Oklahoma area,” said Krakauer. “The landscape here is similar, so the turkeys adapted easily to California.”

And just to get to the question you may be wondering (it’s Turkey Day, after all): Could a resident kill and eat one?

The answer: You would need a permit, and hunting season is only open for a month each year.

“You’d need to check with the city or county,” said Krakauer, laughing. “I don’t think you can just go into Tilden and shoot.”

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