Let’s make the turkey the national bird. It looks better, doesn’t eat road kills and makes a far better dinner.
Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird.
How would you know that? That means you've eaten Bald Eagle.
Ben was right!
Looks better?
We see baldies occasionally, usually in remote areas near rivers and such. Only twice in my life have I seen a Golden Eagle — apparently they VERY occasionally overwinter in the mid-south USA.
The best view of a flying Bald Eagle I’ve seen, though, was on the IL side of the I-24 bridge over the Ohio River. We had just come from under the IL side arch, entering IL, and this Bald Eagle came smoothly gliding over the bridge, maybe 10-12 ft. above the bridge deck, at about a 15 deg. angle to the bridge. So it was going almost the same direction we were, crossing just in front of us. (My thought was that if a semi had been just barely forward of our position, it might have hit the eagle, unless the eagle saw it and veered away.) The eagle instead sailed serenely toward the IL shoreline... Maybe it was headed to the riverboat @ Metropolis - Hahaha.
Sunny day, deep clear blue sky, head and tail feathers gleaming bright... Say what you will, that was magnificent and awesome, and no wild turkey can create anything like that experience. (We have plentiful wild turkeys around here now — interesting birds to be sure, but, magnificent? Nope...)
Wild turkeys indeed don’t feed on road kills, but, they will circle such in a field, trying to figure out what it is, perhaps? I saw 4 or 5 doing so a few days ago, on the edge of a local WMA. When I passed by again a few hours later, the more usual vultures had gathered around the deer carcass & the turkeys were gone.
Or... https://www.popsci.com/turkeys-circle-dead-cat/
:-)