In East Africa four years ago we saw two of the nine subspecies of helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris): the tufted guineafowl (N. m. mitrata) and Reichenow's helmeted guineafowl (N. m. reichenowi).
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| Damara helmeted guineafowl. |
This year while in Etosha NP in Namibia, near the beautiful Olifantsbad waterhole, we saw lots and lots of Damara helmeted guineafowl (N. m. damarensis) which is found from southern Angola to northern Namibia and Botswana. There were many of them, along with a smattering of black-faced impala, but they were on the other side of the waterhole and none of my pictures are very good.
The helmet of the Damara helmeted guineafowl appears to be an off-yellow, less yellow than the tufted guineafowl we saw, and the helmet appears to be taller and have kind of a crescent moon shape.
I saw some of these walking around in a park in Mexicali. At first I thought they were some kind of wild turkey but the zookeeper said they belonged to the zoo part of the park and a few of them escaped and walk around the park.
ReplyDeleteI saw one wild in Redlands a number of years back.
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