Game birds.

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Post any information you can find regarding game birds both wild and domesticated.

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Guineafowl (Acryllium vulturinum).


The Vulturine Guineafowl (Acryllium vulturinum) is the largest and most spectacular of the guineafowl bird family, Numididae, and is the only member of the genus Acryllium. It is a resident breeder in northeast Africa, from southern Ethiopia through Kenya and just into northern Tanzania.



It breeds in dry and open habitats with scattered bushes and trees, such as savannah or grassland. It lays its usually 4-8 cream-colored eggs in a well-hidden grass-lined scrape.



Vulturine Guineafowl is a large (61-71cm) bird with a round body and small head. It is longer in the neck, legs and tail than other guineafowl. The adult has a bare blue face and black neck, and although all other guineafowl have unfeathered heads, this species looks particularly like a vulture because of the long heads and neck.



The slim neck projects from a cape of long, glossy, blue and white hackles. The breast is cobalt blue, and the rest of the body plumage is black, finely spangled with white. The wings are short and rounded, and the tail is also short.



Males and females look alike, although the female is usually slightly smaller than the male. Young birds are mainly grey-brown, with a duller blue breast and short hackles.



Vulturine Guineafowl is a gregarious species, forming flocks outside the breeding season typically of about 25 birds. This species' food is seeds and small invertebrates. This guineafowl is terrestrial, and will run rather than fly when alarmed. Despite the open habitat, it tends to keep to cover, and roosts in trees. It makes loud chink-chink-chink-chink-chink calls.





References

BirdLife International (2004). . 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concernPheasants, Partridges and Grouse by Madge and McGowan, ISBN 0-7136-3966-0



www.beautyofbirds.com/vulturineguineafowl.html
.
Complex society discovered in the vulturine guineafowl.


by Max Planck Society


Vulturine guineafowl move in highly cohesive groups. This cohesion allows them to coordinate their actions as they move together through the landscape, and therefore maintain stable group membership over extensive periods of time. Credit: James Klarevas



Multilevel societies have, until now, only been known to exist among large-brained mammals including humans, other primates, elephants, giraffes and dolphins. Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz report the existence of a multilevel society in a small-brained bird, the vulturine guineafowl (Acryllium vulturinum). The study, published in Current Biology, suggests that the birds can keep track of social associations with hundreds of other individuals—challenging the notion that large brains are a requirement for complex societies, and providing a clue as to how these societies evolved.

Multilevel societies occur when social units, such as pairs, of animals form groups that have stable membership, and these groups then associate preferentially with specific other groups. Because this requires the animals to keep track of individuals in both their own and other groups, the assumption has long been that multilevel societies should only exist in species with the intelligence to cope with this complexity. While many bird species live in groups, these are either open, lacking long-term stability, or highly territorial, lacking associations with other groups.

Vulturine guineafowl, however, present a striking exception: The researchers observed these birds, which are from an ancient lineage resembling dinosaurs, behaving highly cohesively without exhibiting the signature intergroup aggression that is common in other group-living birds. And they manage this despite having relatively small brains, even relative to other birds. "They seemed to have the right elements to form complex social structures, and yet nothing was known about them," says Danai Papageorgiou, lead author on the paper and a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.



Groups of vulturine guineafowl can become very large, and when multiple groups come into contact the number of birds moving together can reach into the hundreds. However, when these 'super-groups' eventually split, they do so back into their original stable group units, meaning that individuals are knowledgeable about who is part of their group and who is not. Credit: Danai Papageorgiou



The study, the first ever conducted on the species, involved tracking social relationships over the course of multiple seasons in a population of over 400 adult birds in a field site in Kenya. The researchers individually marked all birds in the population, and discovered that the population comprised 18 distinct social groups (with 13 to 65 individuals in each). What struck the researchers is that these groups remained stable, despite regularly overlapping with one or more other groups both during the day and at night-time roosts. To see if these groups preferentially associated with one another, the researchers attached GPS tags to a sample of individuals in each group. This meant that the position of every single group was recorded continuously each day, which allowed researchers to observe how all 18 groups in the population were interacting simultaneously. The researchers found that groups associated with each other based on preference rather than through random encounters, and also showed that intergroup associations were more likely to take place during specific seasons and around particular physical features in the landscape.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time a social structure like this has been described for birds," says Papageorgiou. "It is remarkable to observe hundreds of birds coming out of a roost and splitting up perfectly into completely stable groups every single day. How do they do that? It's obviously not just about being smart."

Despite being understudied, guineafowl have challenged the understanding of how sociality has evolved. "This discovery raises a lot of questions about the mechanisms underlying complex societies and has opened up exciting possibilities of exploring what is it about this bird that has made them evolve a social system that is in many ways more comparable to a primate than to other birds," says Damien Farine, senior author on the paper and a principal investigator at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz.

But vulturine guineafowl hold some important clues about how complex societies might have evolved. "Many examples of multilevel societies—primates, elephants and giraffes—might have evolved under similar ecological conditions as vulturine guineafowl," says Farine.



phys.org/news/2019-11-complex-society-vulturine-guineafowl.html







Journal Reference:

Danai Papageorgiou, Charlotte Christensen, Gabriella E.C. Gall, James A. Klarevas-Irby, Brendah Nyaguthii, Iain D. Couzin, Damien R. Farine. The multilevel society of a small-brained bird. Current Biology. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.09.072



Summary

Animal societies can be organised in multiple hierarchical tiers. Such multilevel societies, where stable groups move together through the landscape, overlapping and associating preferentially with specific other groups, are thought to represent one of the most complex forms of social structure in vertebrates. For example, hamadryas baboons ( Papio hamadryas) live in units consisting of one male and one or several females, or of several solitary males, that group into clans. These clans then come together with solitary bachelor males to form larger bands. This social structure means that individuals have to track many different types of relationships at the same time. Here, we provide detailed quantitative evidence for the presence of a multilevel society in a small-brained bird, the vulturine guineafowl ( Acryllium vulturinum). We demonstrate that this species lives in large, multi-male, multi-female groups that associate preferentially with specific other groups, both during the day and at night-time communal roosts.



www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31263-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982219312631%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Eaglehawk posted the 2nd account on my forum.

[oldcyansilverback]

Wild Turkey - Meleagris gallopavo.

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Galliformes
Family: Phasianidae
Subfamily: Meleagridinae
Genus: Meleagris
Species: Meleagris gallopavo

The Wild Turkey is native to North America and is the heaviest member of the diverse order Galliformes. It is the same species as the domestic turkey, which was originally derived from a southern Mexican subspecies of Wild Turkey.

The Wild Turkey, throughout its range, plays a significant role in the cultures of many Native American tribes all over North America.

Habitat.



The turkey is found throughout different parts of North America, from the northeast United States into Mexico.

Wild turkeys like open areas for feeding, mating and habitat. They use forested areas as cover from predators and for roosting in trees at night. A varied habitat of both open and covered area is essential for wild turkey survival.

Description

Adult wild turkeys have long reddish-yellow to grayish-green legs. The body feathers are generally blackish and dark brown overall with a coppery sheen that becomes more complex in adult males. Males, called gobblers, have a large, featherless, reddish head, red throat, and red wattles on the throat and neck. The head has fleshy growths called caruncles. When males are excited, a fleshy flap on the bill expands, and this, the wattles and the bare skin of the head and neck all become engorged with blood, almost concealing the eyes and bill. The long fleshy object over a male's beak is called a snood. When a male turkey is excited, its head turns blue; when ready to fight, it turns red. Each foot has three toes, and males have a spur behind each of their lower legs. Male turkeys have a long, dark, fan-shaped tail and glossy bronze wings.



As with many other species of the Galliformes, turkeys exhibit strong sexual dimorphism. The male is substantially larger than the female, and his feathers have areas of red, purple, green, copper, bronze, and gold iridescence. Females, called hens, have feathers that are duller overall, in shades of brown and gray.

The adult male normally weighs from 5 to 11 kg (11 to 24 lb) and measures 100–125 cm (39–49 in) in length. The adult female is typically much smaller at 2.5–5.4 kg (5.5–12 lb) and is 76 to 95 cm (30 to 37 in) long. The wings are relatively small; the wingspan ranges from 1.25 to 1.44 m (4 ft 1 in to 4 ft 9 in).

Ecology.

Wild turkeys are omnivorous, foraging on the ground or climbing shrubs and small trees to feed. They prefer eating hard mast such as acorns, nuts various seeds, berries, roots and insects. Turkeys also occasionally consume amphibians and small reptiles such as lizards and snakes. Wild turkeys often feed in cow pastures, sometimes visit back yard bird feeders, and favor croplands after harvest to scavenge seed on the ground.

Turkey populations can reach large numbers in small areas because of their ability to forage for different types of food. Early morning and late afternoon are the desired times for eating.

Predators of adults include coyotes, bobcats, cougars, and eagles.



Reproduction.

Males are polygamous, mating with as many hens as they can. Male wild turkeys display for females by puffing out their feathers, spreading out their tails and dragging their wings. This behavior is most commonly referred to as strutting. Courtship begins during the months of March and April, which is when turkeys are still flocked together in winter areas.

When mating is finished, females search for nest sites. Nests are shallow dirt depressions engulfed with woody vegetation. Hens lay a clutch of 10–14 eggs, usually one per day. The eggs are incubated for at least 28 days.

Predators of eggs and nestlings include raccoons, opossums, skunks, foxes, hawks, and snakes.



From Taipan.

[oldcyansilverback]

Green Pheasants aka Japanese Green Pheasants.






The Green Pheasants, Phasianus versicolor - also known as Japanese Pheasants or Versicolor Pheasants - are endemic to Japan, except the island of Yezo, and are introduced to the Hawaiian Islands, western Europe and the United States.These pheasants prefer grassy, bushy areas and light forest areas near cultivated lands and meadows.

This species is common and widespread throughout its native range. It often frequents farmlands and human settlements. The introduced populations on Hawaii are stable. Populations in Western Europe have perhaps bred with the Common Pheasants for a number of years and no pure Green Pheasants exist there any longer. This species has been crossed with the Common Pheasants on some game farms in North America and released.

The Green Pheasant is the national bird of Japan.

It has been noted that these pheasants are particularly sensitive to earth tremors not felt by humans and they call in concert alerting humans of impending quakes.



Subspecies and Hybrids:

The Green Pheasant is sometimes classified as a sub-species of the Common Pheasant, especially since this species is very similar to some of the mutations (namely the melanistic varieties) of the Common Pheasant. Others opine that these two species are simply closely related.

Southern Green Pheasant or Kiji (P. versicolor versicolor) - the darkest of all sub-species. This pheasant is mainly metallic green.

Pacific Green Pheasant (P. v. tamensis) - lighter than the Southern Green, with more blue and purple in the overall plumage.

Northern Green Pheasant (P. v. robustipes) - lighter than the other two. The crown and the mantle have more bronze.
Green Pheasant FemaleThe females are all very similar, but follow the trend as the males: darker in the south to lighter in the north.

Hybrids between the Southern Green and the Common Pheasants occurred in captivity and in the wild where both species have been introduced into adjoining ranges. The hybrids vary in plumage, but are quite different from any mutations.

The Green Pheasant also hybridized with Japan's other endemic pheasant, the Copper Pheasant, although there have only been a few reports of such hybrids in the wild.





Description:
Males:
The mantle is green with a few small buff (= a pattern of fine, wavy, worm-like lines or streaks of color) on its lower part. The crown, nape, back and rump is dark metallic green, much tinged with olive or bluish grey. The neck is purplish-violet; wing-coverts bluish-grey; rump and upper tail coverts greenish-grey; tail green with purple. The beak is horn / yellowish colored and their legs and feet are blackish.

Female:

Not as brightly colored as the male to easily conceal her while brooding or caring for the chicks. Females are more strongly mottled than the Common Pheasant females. The dark part of the feathers of the mantle is black and extends right up to the narrow, pale brown border, and it has a green sheen near the tip.

Male Green Pheasant


Northern Green PheasantsPersonality:

These game pheasant are restless and wary, and usually remain rather wild in captivity. They startle easily and often hide or seek sanctuary in thick vegetation or shrubs where they also usually sleep.


Breeding:
Green Pheasants are relatively easy to keep in captivity but are not currently bred in large numbers. They should be provided a large well-planted aviary, about 30 sq.ft / 9 m2 would be recommended. Sheltered areas should be provided, including placing grass and reed tufts throughout for the hen to nest under. Males are not aggressive and several hens can be bred to one male. These pheasants are pretty hardy and withstand cold temperatures pretty well.

The breeding season starts in March or April and goes on until June. Immature birds will be ready to breed once they have attained their adult plumage, which is when they are about a year old.

The hen lays 6 to 15 olive-colored eggs which she incubates for 23 to 25 days. The hens are usually good brooders and make attentive parents provided they are undisturbed during this time and their nest is in a well-sheltered area.

Housing your Pheasant
Breeding and Caring for your Pheasant

Diet:
Wild Diet: Grains, plants, insects, and worms

Captive Diet: Pellets, seeds, green food, live food.

www.beautyofbirds.com/greenpheasants.html

[Gorilla king]

Rock ptarmigan


The rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) is a medium-sized gamebird in the grouse family. It is known simply as the ptarmigan in the UK and in Canada, where it is the official bird for the territory of Nunavut, Canada,[1] and the official game bird for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.[2] It is known as the snow chicken in the United States. In Japan, it is known as the raichō (雷鳥), which means "thunder bird". It is the official bird of Gifu, Nagano, and Toyama Prefectures and is a protected species nationwide.[3]






simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_ptarmigan

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