Breeding schedule.—Eggs are laid at least in May.
Number of eggs.—Clutch-size is 10 to 12 eggs.
Nests are placed on the surface of the ground in woody or herbaceous cover.
Wild Turkey: Meleagris gallopavo Linnaeus.—Turkeys formerly occurred as common residents in flood-plain woodland in eastern Kansas, and their distribution extended through the west in riparian woodland. Present population in eastern and southern sectors are partly the result of introductions of birds from Missouri by humans in the 1950s. Turkeys in southern Kansas are also present owing to natural dispersal along the Arkansas and Medicine Lodge rivers of birds native to and introduced into Oklahoma. No specimens of turkeys presently found in Kansas are available for examination but these birds probably are referable to M. g. silvestris Vieillot, the trinomen applied to turkeys in Missouri and northeastern Oklahoma.
Turkeys from southern Texas recently have been liberated at several localities in southern Nebraska; turkeys seen in extreme northern Kansas are thus probably of these stocks. The name M. g. intermedia Sennett is applicable to these birds.
Breeding schedule.—No information is available on the egg-season in Kansas; turkeys have nested in southern Kansas within recent years, however.
Number of eggs.—Clutch-size is perhaps 12 eggs.
Nests are placed on the surface of the ground, usually well-concealed under woody vegetation.
King Rail: Rallus elegans elegans Audubon.—This summer resident is locally common in marshlands. Nesting records or adults taken in the breeding season are from Cheyenne, Meade, Pratt, Stafford, Cloud, Riley, Douglas, Anderson, and Allen counties. Dates of arrival in spring are recorded from April 7 to April 28; the median date is April 18. Departure in autumn is possibly as early as September in the north, but four records are in the period October 12 to November 25. The species occasionally can be found in winter (Douglas County, December 28, 1915).
Breeding schedule.—Fourteen records of breeding span the period May 1 to July 20; the modal date for egg-laying is June 5.