This week's featured bird, the helmeted guineafowl, has unlikely connections to a bird featured on many tables this week, the turkey. Wild turkeys were named Meleagris gallopavo to connect them to the guineafowl family (the helmeted guineafowl is Numida meleagris) because explorers who first saw turkeys noted the similarities between them and the guineafowl they were more familiar with. The helmeted guineafowl is similar in another way, as well - it is the most popular game bird in Africa and is often featured on dinner tables itself.
Would you like to see the helmeted guineafowl or other turkey cousins? Share your sightings in the comments!
Helmeted Guineafowl
Photo © Mike's Birds
Comments
A windy, old country road I drive to get to a section of Crooked Creek has a few farms besides a few homes on it and last spring after I passed a small house with large field behind it, I was driving up sort of a grade with fairly high grass on the right of a bank about 4 feet high when I heard this strange noise, slowed down to almost a stop and a Guinnea hen stretched its head and neck above grass and looked like it wanted to attack my car. I got a few photos of (will have to look for those) I haven’t seen it that close since, but it seems to belong to the house I passed and I have seen it in the yard/field behind that house since with a domestic white duck running all around chasing each other.