13 May 2015
In my experience, you know you’re in a tick-infested Lyme-disease hot spot when the yards have deer fencing and you see this bird roaming nearby. Deer fencing keeps deer out of the garden. This bird keep the ticks at bay.
Helmeted guineafowl eat insects, seeds and weeds and are best known (to me) for eating ticks. Studies have shown they make a significant dent in the tick population on lawns but you shouldn’t keep guineafowl in an urban or suburban area. Your neighbors will hate you.
Native to arid south and central Africa, helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris) have been kept as a source of food for thousands of years but they’ve never become as domesticated as chickens. They love to roam and shout.
They are great talkers who keep up a constant conversation with each other and shout warnings for every danger known to guineafowl. Unfortunately, once they get going they are loud and prolonged about dangers that don’t matter to us humans. Sometimes their shouting makes us laugh …
… but after a while the neighbors hate them, not only because they shout but because they refuse to stay at home.
Guineafowl are inveterate free-rangers. They will roost in trees and walk off to find better eating on the neighbors’ property. Gunieafowl advice columns warn to be prepared to lose them to foxes, coyotes, dogs and owls, especially if you try to keep them at home by clipping their wings. They want to visit the neighbors.
However, if you live in a remote place with lots of ticks they’re worth the effort.
I was naive the first time I saw a guineafowl roaming a front yard near New Jersey’s Belleplain State Forest. Back then, a decade ago, I had never been to a truly tick-infested place until I walked into that forest. About five years ago I noticed a guineafowl inside a deer fence in northern Jefferson County near the Clarion River and it too was a tick-infested hotspot. Oh my gosh!
So if you see this bird and deer fencing, pull your socks over your pant legs before you get out of the car!
You can’t miss noticing the guineafowl. He eats ticks and shouts.
(photo by Dick Daniels via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
Kate, you saw them in NJ and PA, but they are native to Africa? Are there a lot in the US?
People keep guineafowl for a variety of reasons. Click on the Gunieafowl advice columns link to find out more.
I don’t know how many there are in the U.S.
This made me laugh! We saw guinea fowl on the way to the Todd Sanctuary up Rt. 28. My boyfriend has a bad memory of them keeping him up all night from when a friend had them. He concurs they are loud and continuous!
There is a farm near me that has chickens and these guys roaming around. I got a few pics, and YES they are loud!
My pic
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pghdjshawn/8749792212/in/photolist-
I would so buy a few of these…I think they are awesome! ha
Shawn
Love this! The “wildlife-loving” part of me is attracted to the natural way of addressing a growing problem (ticks). They’re so interesting to look at, too. The “diabolical” part of me would LOVE to keep the neighbors awake – under the guise of me being a wildlife-loving kind of gal, of course. WIN-WIN!
The Rainey Street neighborhood of Austin had a free-ranging guinea named Geraldine. She roamed the neighborhood at will, and even had her own Facebook page. She was killed in a car accident last year, but her legacy lives on. Apparently there is a new resident guinea in the neighborhood!