Vulturine Guineafowl

Acryllium vulturinum

The most spectacular guineafowl alive. Electric blue breast, bare vulture neck, and hackles striped black, white, and blue.

Population: Population size not quantified; suspected stable in the absence of evidence for decline or substantial threats (BirdLife/IUCN assessment)
Habitat: Dry, open savanna and grassland with scattered bushes and trees (arid/semi-arid thorn-scrub); also uses dry shrublands, scrubland at forest edges, and some subtropical/tropical moist montane forest edges, from sea level up to about 1,900 m elevation
Fun fact: The vulturine guineafowl is the largest living guineafowl species and gets its name from its bare, vulture-like head and neck; it lives in some of the most stable, complex multi-family social groups known outside primates, with individuals maintaining the same flock associations for years despite no strict linear hierarchy.
Range: Resident (non-migratory) in northeast Africa: southern Ethiopia, northern/northwestern and southwestern Somalia, arid northern and eastern Kenya, and just into northeastern Tanzania; estimated range of roughly 1,500,000 km²
Diet: Omnivorous ground forager: primarily seeds, leaves, berries, fruits, roots, bulbs, buds and shoots, plus insects, spiders, scorpions, small molluscs, and occasionally small reptiles/rodents
Size: 0.66 m
Lifespan: 20 years

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