Late on Monday afternoon I spotted this large male Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge as he was foraging in the leaf litter. The turkey was very focused on scratching about in the fallen leaves and let me get so close to him that I was able to take this shot at 250mm on my zoom lens that extends to 600mm.
The light was already starting to fade—the sun set at 4:53 pm that day—and I know that my relatively old DSLR does not handle low light very well, so I did not want to raise the ISO beyond ISO 800, for fear of introducing an unacceptable amount of graininess. Instead, I captured this image with an exposure of 1/40 second, a really slow shutter speed. Even though I was using a monopod for stability, many of my shots were blurry, but this particular image ended up pretty sharp.
I love the way that I was able to capture so many details of the turkey’s feathers. From a distance, the main feathers look to be a solid dark color, but up-close, they show a lot of color variation and patterns. I was happy too that I was able to get a good view of the turkey’s “beard.” I’ve read that you can estimate the age of a turkey on the basis of the length of its beard, but I am not confident that I could figure that out—all I can say is that the turkey appeared to be a mature male to me.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Great photo with wonderful detail!
Thanks, Don. The turkey was a relatively cooperative subject this time–usually they disappear into the brush when they detect my presence.
When I clicked on the photo I was delighted to see the iridescence and colors…beautiful. Wonderful photo, Mike.
Thanks, Jet. It is surprising to see how beautiful turkeys are when viewed up close. Of course, I would have liked to have seen the turkey displaying his tail feathers, but it is not the season for those kinds of displays. I think I have to wait until spring for the spread-tail display, like the one in this posting from a few years ago. https://michaelqpowell.com/2018/04/03/displaying-wild-turkey/
Great photo, Mike. I think he’s happy he missed ‘participating’ in the holiday feasts.
🙂 I think you are right, Dan. Certainly he did not want to be the “guest of honor.”