ML618649087

Age and sex

Immature Female - 1

Observation details

Huge galliform bird hanging out in two small raised planters on East 49th Street during peak evening rush hour, clotting the flow of pedestrian traffic as people stopped to gawk and take pictures. The bird's bronzy-brown plumage with dark barring easily ruled out other land fowl that could conceivably turn up as exotic escapees in New York, like peafowl, guineafowl, or pheasants. The bird's brown-fringed breast feathers, lack of a "beard" on the breast, and lack of spurs on the tarsi indicate that it is a female, and the uneven lengths of the rectrices (central rectrices longer and lateral rectrices significantly shorter) indicate that this is a first cycle/SY bird, i.e., a bird hatched last spring (reference: Peter Pyle's Identification Guide to North American Birds). The lack of white plumage and the sleek body shape seem to indicate that this is a wild-type bird, not a domestic bird. I went looking for this bird because earlier in the afternoon, I had seen a cell phone photo of a Wild Turkey posted to iNaturalist by someone visiting from out of state. That seemed worth checking out after work, and indeed it was. The bird certainly looked like a fish out of water, but it was calm and was tolerating close approaches by onlookers (of course, people should give the bird a wide berth for its sake and theirs) and drinking from a container of water put out by nearby restaurant staff. It did not like loud noises, however, and it came to attention for sirens, bangs, etc. Its path to happier environs seems like a challenging one. Some folks did make calls trying to assess assistance options. Evidently non-birders had been posting about the bird on social media through the day, including videos of the bird walking in the street. Photos attached.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D7100

Lens

70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-6.3

ISO

1600

Focal length

116 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/4.8

Shutter speed

1/200 sec

Dimensions

4284 pixels x 2856 pixels

Original file size

5.12 MB