Novasola Turkey-Pheasant
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IUCN Conservation Status: Least concern (LC)
Description:
Large
turkey-like bird with plump body, long legs, small head, and broad tail. Body
brown overall, with black and white barring in the flight feathers and gold
barring in the shoulder. Rump gold with black and white striping, tail brown
and tipped with bold black and white stripes. Males have a bald head with
blue-gray skin, fleshy wattles, and a heavy bill extending over the forehead in
a brightly colored orange “shield”. Females have more feathers on the head and
a less pronounced shield. Males also have two extra long tail feathers that droop during display, spurs on their legs, and an obvious bare
patch of bluish skin on the breast which is an air sac they inflate during
courtship. Females lack spurs and air sac. Appearance overall similar to Wild
Turkey, but slightly smaller and with a shorter neck.
Voice:
Males
crow with a long, sustained note followed by jumbled gobbling, like a mix of turkey
gobbling and Indian peafowl crowing. Males will make deep, booming growls
during courtship while their air sacs are inflated, and will also make drumming
sounds by beating their wings against the air sac. Both sexes “mumble” and purr
when in the flock. Other various calls given associated with flight and alarm
sound harsher and like cackling. Females give special whistling calls when
interacting with chicks.
Range and Habitat:
Range
extends across Novasola, but they are more commonly found in the eastern and
southern forests and lowlands and are uncommon in the interior steppe and
western rainforests. However, populations are expanding with increased numbers,
and they are now more common in some areas where they were historically rare,
especially surrounding Charlotte Sound. Prefers open woodlands, oak savannah, and
forest edges, and will also use denser deciduous and mixed deciduous-pine forests,
agricultural fields, scrubland, and, infrequently, wetlands. Avoids altitudes
higher than 6,000 feet. Absent on Kosatka and Francis Islands. Populations have
been introduced for game in parts of the mainland US, Europe, and Australia.
Discussion:
Though
often confused for the similar looking, and much more widely known, Wild Turkey
of mainland North America, the related Novasola Turkey-pheasant is unique in
many ways. The iridescent gold in the Turkey-pheasant’s wings and rump and the
male’s blue head and orange upper bill are obvious distinctions, and large
inflatable air sac on the male’s chest is unlike anything seen in turkeys or
any endemic birds.
The
genus name Pavoinsulus comes from the Latin Pavo for
pheasant/peafowl, and insulates, meaning island. Phusallis come from the
Greek for wind, alluding to the bird’s inflating air sac. P. phusallis
is a galliform bird and a member of the Phasianidae subfamiliy, and together
with the turkey, Meleagris, compose the tribe Meleagridini. Turkey-pheasant
fossils have been found across the pacific northwest in Alaska, British
Columbia, Washington, and Idaho, where they likely first evolved to fill a
similar ecological niche to turkeys, as they still do on Novasola. Important to
many indigenous cultures, the Turkey-pheasant, or madalegsmigaq to
Yukandaluk people or kutlá núkt in the Gallquayan language, is
hunted for its meat, its feathers are used in ornamentation and ceremony, and
their air sacs are used as water pouches.
Novasola
Turkey-pheasants prefer sparse or open woodlands, edges, and savannah, but they
are flexible and can be found in most lowland ecosystems. Populations have been
introduced or stocked in regions across the island as well, including areas
with less desirable habitat like dense temperate rainforests or sagebrush
desert. The Turkey-pheasant’s diet consists mostly of plant matter, especially
seeds like acorns, walnuts, pine nuts, hickory, and other nuts, madrone fruit,
and berries, and buds, ferns, and bulbs. In the summer they will eat more leafy
matter like sedges and grasses, and they will occasionally supplement their
diet with animal foods like bird eggs, amphibians, snails, and insects. They
forage on the ground, or in low shrubs or branches, and can use their strong
legs to scratch the leaf litter and soil.
Turkey-pheasants
spend most of their time on the ground and move around by walking or running.
However, despite their weight and bulk, they are surprisingly skillful fliers
and will fly short distances to avoid predators, cross rivers, or find roosts. At
night they roost in trees. Social birds, Turkey-pheasants are usually found in
nomadic flocks. Outside the breeding season, males flock together in small
groups while females form larger flocks. During the breeding season, males will
separate and build harems of females. Males defend their flocks from other
males through threat displays and occasional violence, using their spurs as
weapons. During courtship, the male will display for the females by puffing out
his feathers, spreading his tail fan, and inflating his large, blue air sac. He
might also beat his wings against the air sac to create loud booming noises. Females
build rudimentary nests, usually under dense cover, to lay her eggs. Males take
no part in caring for offspring. Turkey-pheasant social hierarchies are not
well studied, but the presence of strict hierarchical structure in Wild Turkey
flocks suggests the Turkey-pheasant too has a stable pecking order.
The
largest galliform on the island, and one of Novasola’s largest birds overall,
behind the Novasola Condor, Black Crane, and both eagles, the Turkey-pheasant is the largest endemic
bird upon which hunting is allowed. Though not as popular a game species as
other pheasants, the Turkey-pheasant is the most hunted game bird, likely due
to a combination of their size, commonness, and good taste. Because they are so
popular a game bird, many populations are heavily managed, and they have been
introduced or stocked in many areas across the island. They are also bred on
game farms to bolster hunting and on meat farms. Many hunters and local farm
enthusiasts alike consider the Novasola Turkey-pheasant to be a better, and
greener, alternative to turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.
Despite
being completely separate species in different genera, the Novasola
Turkey-pheasant is often confused for, or considered as, a Wild Turkey, and
usually simply called a turkey. To the informed or observant, however, the
Turkey-pheasant is a one-of-a-kind bird and an exciting part of what makes
Novasolan landscapes and biota so unique.
“It
was with a particular excitement I set out that cold morning, intent on
bringing home the bird so often mentioned and so strongly associated with
Novasolan sport. The Turkey Pheasant is so renowned for its quality meat that
word of the fowl had reached me in New York years before I had even dreamed of
a career in ornithology, let alone one on the island itself. In fact, a chance
to hunt the animal myself, I’m ashamed to admit, was not a small factor in my
decision to join the Corps. Now that I’ve had many a chance, and can compare
the Pheasant to the Turkeys of New York, I can with confidence favor the
Fastwater fowl.” - Richard Reichwald, “A Sportsman’s Twenty Years in Novasola”,
Forest and Stream Magazine, 1922
“Dressed
in handsome browns, bronze, and gold, the Turkey Pheasant of arid woods finds best
sanctuary and camouflage in the autumn colors of the Morning Mountains. I have
seen great success encountering the birds in the Red and Cook ranges, or more
accurately their eastern and western foothills, than in any wild county of comparable
size on the island. There they busy themselves foraging the fallen acorns not
yet claimed by the pigeons and squirrels.
…
Though
classed together with the turkeys of the Atlantic states, the Pheasant is
strikingly unlike the weightier mainland fowl. In place of snoods and beards,
the Turkey Pheasant adorns himself with a bill like burning coal and a bladder
at the base of the neck which inflates to the size of a bedpan. He spreads his
tail and puffs his feathers and beats his instrument with his wings like a war
drum as if to show all observers that he, like Ozymandias, is king-of-kings. ‘Look
upon me, ye Mighty, and despair! These are my females, and this my kingdom!’
It
is during those weeks of posturing at the start of the breeding months that the
fowl are most easily observed. It seems in the haste to mate, or without their
progeny to protect, the birds abandon the instinct to hide or to flee, preferring
open clearings or fields, and they may allow the approach of a man, or even
hound, to half the distance comfortable to them the rest of the year. I recall on
one occasion, in the warmer weeks of October, 1909, I was touring the
Fastwaters with Mr. Grinnell when we learned just that. We had been fowling for
grouse along the shores of the upper Kusasha and had crested a ridge to see eastward.
Across a shallow gully, on the opposite ridge, were twenty Turkey Pheasants, dark
and obvious even with the morning sun shining low behind them. Mr. Grinnell,
eager for a better look, walked within thirty paces before they retreated into
the chaparral.” – Birds of Novasola, 1912
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| Male (right) performing courtship display for a female (left) somewhere to the west of the Cook Mountains. Illustration provided by the Museum of Novasola. |