Monday, April 1, 2013

Beautiful Guinea fowl & Mockingbird songs?

Last week I noticed a beautiful melody coming from the fields near my house.  When I went to investigate the beautiful and melodious bird song, I couldn't figure it out.  I only saw my flock of guinea fowl walking in the front fields.  Hmmm.

This morning I went outside and there was that beautiful melody again!  It was so close to the house!  I looked in the bushes and saw a big spotted male guinea and his 2 mates.  And sure enough, the guinea boy looked right at me and sang the beautiful melody.  The melody had high notes and low notes, and is truly breathtaking!  And then a bird repeated the melody from up in the treetops!  The guinea answered, the bird answered back, and before I knew it other guinea fowl and other birds in the area were all answering with the same melody.  I was speachless!

Normally guinea fowl noises are ugly honks.  Every now and then the guinea boy added a honk or two to the song, but then continued with the melody.  I believe the birds which were singing overheard were mockingbirds.  Also other guinas in the area were honking every now and then, don't get me wrong, there were random guinea honks, but the melody was louder than the honks.

I know that mockingmirds repeat after other birds, but I never knew that guinea fowl sang such beautiful songs!  I only saw the same guinea singing, the 2 females with him were both silent.  He was singing to them.  They followed him everywhere we walked and sang.  He often stopped and waited for them to catch up to him and sang to them.

I called my husband outside (he was inside) and asked him to listen to the melodies.  He said he noticed the past few nights the guineas have been singing this beautiful bird song in the evenings before they fly up into their roosting tree.  He called it their happy song.  He was amazed the mocking birds were repeating it throughout the area.  He wasn't sure if it was only the males that sang.

Has anyone else heard their guinea fowl singing a beautiful and harmoneous song instead of honking?  Please do tell!  I will try to record this and post it in a future post! 

The bird song made me think of the mockingjays' music in The Hunger Games trilagy by Suzanne Collins.  In the books, the mockingjays repeated songs and tunes, which truly sounded beautiful.  Now I have my own bird music right outside.  

3 comments:

Kessie said...

I went and poked around Youtube, and all I could find were the more common guinea sounds, male and female. See if you can get a video of it next time they sing! I'd love to hear it!

Rae said...

No harmonies, as we only have one. He does emit some low trills and whistles sometimes. Pretty. Nothing quite like you're describing, but also nothing like the usual hair-raising racket. Lol.

Chai Chai said...

That is amazing! I never really noticed the guineas softly cooing until you pointed it out to me but I can only imagine how wonderful it must be to hear them mimicking other birds. You should record it, I bet bird people would be amazed.