Help Identifying..
I keep running into this bird in my neighborhood. (Coastal Suburb of Tampa Florida). Unfortunately I have my dogs with me so I can't get close. I think it's a chicken, or turkey possibly. Merlin, which is usually great, seems to ignore my location and keeps suggesting "Red Junglefowl".
Any expertise you have to share is appreciated in advance. If it's helpful, this is the only one of these I've seen since I've lived here, and I spend a lot of time in preserves looking for animals. So either domestic fowl or something unusual going on.
9 replies
Looks like a chicken hen dude.
I mean it looks like a Red Junglefowl. Is there any reason you think it isn’t?
I just figured out it was present here. When I initially looked up red Junglefowl it showed it's habitat as southeast Asia, and that particular article did not mention it being an exotic here in Florida. I think I get it now.
If you use https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/redjun/cur/introduction?login#distrib rather than Merlin it shows the feral/domestic population as well.
Well a chicken is a subspecies the red junglefowl, lol. Gallus gallus domesticus while the red junglefowl is just Gallus gallus. So it's not wrong.
You can probably narrow it down with this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_Florida
Looks about the size of a chicken? Maybe it's something of that sort? There's lots of chickens running around Key West... Idk
Raw nuggies
could be an invasive/introduced bird species, given that its florida. turkey would be very unusual, since they are quite larger. are those red feathers on the head? if there wasa clearer picture it might help. could be the female junglefowl.
Ybor is lousy with various chicken species, lol.