Wild Turkey, Nebraska. Photo: Rick Wright.

The first Wild Turkeys brought to Europe were sent back from Mexico by Cortés in 1519. According to the Handbook of the Birds of the World, domestic turkeys were “well established” in Spain and in England by 1541–so well established, in fact, that the Jamestown colonists actually brought turkeys along with them when they sailed for Virginia in 1607, making that the first North American bird to travel west across the Atlantic.

Happy Thanksgiving!