The Helmeted Guinea Fowl (Numida meleagris)

Aug 03, 2008 Features / Columnists, Interesting Creatures in Guyana

The Guinea Fowl is of a family of birds that falls within the same order as the pheasants, turkeys, partridges and other game birds which originated in Africa.

They are a family of insect and seed-eating, ground-nesting birds that have round, small featherless heads and spangled white/grey-black plumage.

This bird species is the largest of all game birds and can measure as much as 40 to 71 centimetres in length and weigh about 1.3 kilograms. Their wings are short and rounded and the tail is also short.

They are able to breed in warm, fairly dry and open habitats with scattered shrubs and trees such as savannahs or farmland.

These birds lay clutches of about 20 to 30 eggs in a well-hidden scrape and the females alone incubate the eggs for 26 to 28 days.

The eggs are heavy shelled and the size of a small hen’s egg. They have a large yolk and many people regard them as superior to a hen’s egg.

The chicks are cryptically coloured and rapid wing growth enables them to flutter onto low branches barely a week after hatching.

The chicks when hatched are very active, with bright eyes, and like the pheasant there is an indescribable timidity about them. These Guinea Fowl live as long as 12 years in the wild.

Guinea Fowl are often regarded as a gregarious species, forming flocks outside the breeding season, typically of about 25 birds, that also roost communally.

They are particularly well-suited to consuming massive quantities of lyme disease-carrying ticks.
These birds are terrestrial, and prone to run rather than fly when alarmed.

They are, however, like most short- and broad-winged birds, very agile and powerful flyers, capable of hovering and even flying backwards when necessary.

They are also well known as great runners, and can readily cover 10 kilometres and more in a day.
Interesting enough they make loud harsh calls when disturbed. It is not an easy task to distinguish the sex of Guineas.

The males usually have slightly larger head appendages while the females seldom screech like the males.
It is said that once the male selects his mate, they remain steadfast companions.

Their diet consists of a variety of animal and plant food: seeds, fruits, greens, snails, spiders, worms, frogs, lizards, small snakes and small mammals.

Guineas are equipped with strong claws and scratch in soil for food much like domestic chickens. They have well-developed spurs and use these to great effect when fighting.

The birds have been extensively domesticated over the years and introduced outside their natural range for example in Southern France, the United States as well as right here in Guyana.

There are still many of this bird species in the wild where they forage in large flocks, thus making them fine game birds.

When they are domesticated, Guineas are kept mainly for their eggs which are considered a delicacy and have a good flavour as does their meat which is very edible.

Guinea Fowl rank as one of the best destroyers of many pest insects and spend a great deal of their time looking for beetles, grasshoppers and other insects.

They, however, do very little damage to either flowers or vegetables, unlike chickens, that will destroy any garden they are allowed to enter.

They are also said to have another advantage over chickens in that they have long been considered the winged watchdog since they are said to raise an alarm, day or night, when there is an intruder – be it man, bird or beast.

It is said too that these fowl do make good companion birds for other domestic birds as they tend to be non-aggressive to birds of a similar size and do not carry many of the diseases and germs that chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese are susceptible to.
(Source: The Wikepedia Free Online Encyclopedia)