Yesterday morning, at an ungodly hour, I was awakened by bizarre squawking noises from outdoors. I initially thought that perhaps one of my neighbors had decided to purchase a chicken for Sunday dinner, but it didn’t quite sound like a chicken.
Unable to ignore the noise, I peeked out the blinds and saw this rather large bird strutting about. Keep in mind that I live in the middle of DC and rarely see something that is not a pigeon, squirrel, or rat. This thing was somewhat larger than a turkey or goose, had black feathers with very even white speckles, and had a thing along its beak and head that looked kind of like a rooster’s comb only much smaller.
I would love to identify it, but for now, I’m still flabbergasted. I’m assuming it came over from the zoo (I’m about a mile from there). I did call the humane society, but they were very calm about it and didn’t want to send someone out as I didn’t think the bird was sick or dying. It apparently flew away sometime during my morning shower, which is weird because I thought that most birds that size couldn’t really fly.
Most assuredly not a pheasant. This is a ringneck pheasant and this is a Szechuan pheasant. Neither approaches the size of a goose or turkey. They’re about the size of a chicken. edited to fix second link - ub
I’ve checked out the pheasant aspect, and most of the pheasant pics seem to indicate some substantial feathers in the tail area, even on the females, so that doesn’t match.
I thought vultures had kind of knobbly heads, for lack of a better description. Maybe some vulture breeds don’t?
After looking at vulture & turkey pictures, I have to say that the main difference is that this bird didn’t have a long snaky neck the way they do–it was much closer to the body, like a pheasant.
I have to say that the guineafowl looks the closest thus far–I looked some more pictures of various guineafowls and it looks quite a lot like the thing I saw. I don’t know about the siz discrepancy–maybe in my startled state, I perceived it as bigger than it actually was. Here’s a good picture of the guineafowl: http://members.aol.com/CELESTmich/picscel/gfmly1.jpg
dinahmoe, I was walking my mom’s dog once a few years back and a couple of wild turkey did the turkey-bounce thing across the road in front of me. The dog took off after them so fast I didn’t even have time to try to rein her in-- first time in my life I was ever unintentionally airborne! Then of course the slack ran out of the leash, which I was still holding after I made friends with the frozen ground. Ow.
No, not a turkey. Wrong color, wrong neck, wrong tail. The web references I’ve dug up say that guinea fowl are actually used to watch farms in Africa because of the hideous noise they make when anyone gets near. I’m going with guinea fowl.
