Species profile
About the crested guineafowl
The crested guineafowl replaces the familiar helmeted guineafowl inside forest. It is blue-black densely spotted with white, with bare blue facial skin, bright red eyes and an unruly mop of curled black feathers on the crown that looks unmistakably like bad hair.
It lives in thick forest and riverine thicket, moving in noisy flocks that scratch through leaf litter — often beneath a monkey troop, feeding on fruit dropped from the canopy. Mahale, Manyara's forest and the coastal forest belt all hold it.
Life in the wild
Behavior & relationships
Behavior
Terrestrial and diurnal, scratching through leaf litter in flocks and roosting in trees at night. Follows monkey troops for dropped fruit.
Social life
Flocks of about five to thirty, cohesive and vocal, keeping in contact with a rolling chatter as they move through the understorey.
What makes it remarkable
Special features
A crest of curled black plumes found in no other guineafowl, and a habit of shadowing monkey troops to feed on what they drop.
