Here is a helmeted guineafowl showing off its helmet

Today I want to write about a fascinating looking bird, the helmeted guineafowl.

Here are five interesting facts about them:

1. These cool looking birds grow up to 58 cm long.  They have a bony growth on top of their head that is called a casque.
2. They spend most of their time on the ground, looking for food, but they can fly short distances if they feel threatened and spend the night on low branches of trees.
3. At breeding time, male helmeted guineafowl are very aggressive towards each other and often injure each other.  The females lay 6-12 eggs in a small scrape on the ground.  The babies are called keets.
4. They live in small groups of up to 25 birds and eat seeds, insects, worms, roots, fruit, frogs and small reptiles.
5. Helmeted guineafowl live in dry open grassland and are very common throughout Africa and have also been introduced to other countries such as Australia, Brazil, France and the West Indies.

I hope that you found these facts interesting and learned something new.

Are there any other interesting facts that you would like to share about helmeted guineafowl?