CHACHALACAS AT DAWN

Each morning as I jog along the road leading north to the beach, at a certain moment the chachalacas begin calling. I'm talking about ORTALIS VETULA, a species that looks half turkey and half pheasant. Chachalacas are considered "gallinaceous birds," along with turkeys, grouse, quail and pheasants.

Chachalacas are long-tailed, long-necked, brown birds with wingspreads of over two feet, so they are good- sized birds. Usually they flock together in thickets, in small numbers. They like to keep low and usually you hear them much more than see them. Their call is incredibly loud and raucous, even keeping in mind their hefty size.

The sound they make is reminiscent of the screeching a wet balloon makes when it's rubbed hard with your hands. The sound is given rhythmically, with the phrases much repeated.

One interpretation of the call is that there's a high- pitched, squeaky one sounding like the bird is saying "Knock it off! Knock it off! Knock it off!" while another bird calls in a much lower, hoarse voice "Keep it up! Keep it up! Keep it up!" You can imagine what a dozen or so sound like calling all at once.

The most vivid memory I have related to chachalacas is one from back in the 80s when one early morning I was sitting quietly just off a trail in lowland San Luis Potosí, watching for birds. A young Nauahatl Indian woman came along on her way to the market, carrying a small child on her back. Just as they passed me the chachalacas burst into an obstreperous uproar.

"Niņo," she whispered, "listen too how pretty the chachalacas sing."

EXCERPT FROM NEWSLETTER OF AUGUST 25, 2008:

CHICKEN CHACHALACAS
In late afternoon with the temperature in the upper 90s, the sun's brightness brain-numbing and the village just emerging from siesta I strolled mad-dog- Englishman down the middle of the street. Doņa Martha, buried in shadows beneath her Anona tree, almost whispered, but in a way carrying in the afternoon's deadness, "Look at the chachalacas... "

I'm half deaf and these Maya speakers throw Spanish phraseology at me I'm unaccustomed to so I'm always expecting what I think I hear to mean something other than what it seems to mean, but "Look at the chachalacas" was pretty straightforward. The problem was that chachalacas are wary birds. You hear them calling raucously at dawn from out in the scrub but then they're quiet the rest of the day, and in this area where hunting is the main male activity after gathering firewood (people eat chachalacas) typically you can't get very close to them.

With dumb incomprehension I looked at Doņa Martha who smilingly pointed across the road where indeed two Plain Chachalacas, ORTALIS VETULA, calmly promenaded atop a neighbor's stone fence.

"I'm going for my camera," I said, and the picture is shown below:

They were young chachalacas with their tails just beginning to develop but they displayed the basic features making them chachalacas. Namely, they were brownish, largish, long-legged, long-necked birds with chicken-like beaks, and with reddish, naked, loose throat skin. On an adult the tail is about as long as the body, minus the neck. The sexes are similar.

Once I understood that they were juveniles already I could guess what their story was: "Someone found a nest out in the scrub, got the eggs and put them under a broody hen," I suggested to Doņa Martha, who nodded in affirmation. These birds were thinking that they were chickens, which explained why I had been able to get within five feet of them.

Among the thirty or so taxonomic ORDERS of birds, chachalacas fit with the "Gallinaceous Birds," along with chickens, turkeys, grouse, quail, pheasants and the like. Within this order, chachalacas belong to the Cracid FAMILY, which includes other cracids such as guans and curassows. Howell refers to cracids as "large, primitive, neotropical gamebirds." Plain Chachalacas reach about 22 inches long (56 cm).

Mexico is home to four chachalaca species. Our Plain Chachalaca is distributed from the southernmost tip of Texas south along the Mexican Gulf Coast and the Yucatan to western Nicaragua.