Wild Turkey Strutting in a Meadow Coloring Page

This one leaves the cartoons behind and draws the real bird. A wild tom stands in profile with his tail opened into a tall half circle, the individual feathers marked off around the edge. His head carries both a long wattle at the throat and a snood drooping over the beak, and his wing feathers are laid in as overlapping shapes along his flank. Two full legs stand on a thin sparse row of grass blades at the foot of the page.

Real wild turkey plumage is far more interesting than the brown most people reach for. The body feathers are dark and iridescent, shifting between bronze, copper and green depending on the light, and colored pencils layered over one another are the only easy way to suggest that. Tail feathers, by contrast, are barred in bands of brown and buff, so working across each feather rather than down it will get you closer to the real thing.

Wild turkeys nearly vanished. Hunting and forest clearing cut the North American population to roughly 30,000 birds by the 1930s, and reintroduction programs have since carried it past six million.