Conserve Wildlife Blog

New Bird Discovery Highlights April Fools Day

April 1st, 2021

by Jim Wright for TheRealJamesBond.net

In this rare photo, a Wild Turducken can be seen drinking in a nearby marsh. Photo by Alice Leurck.

Exciting news! The Montclair Bird Club announced today the likely discovery of a new bird species, the Wild Turducken, a heretofore-undocumented upland bird of northern New Jersey. 

The new species is believed to be a hybrid of a Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata), Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) and a Jersey Giant Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), according to  the Allendale Ornithology Institute (AOI).

“To discover such a rare new breed in the middle of suburbia is  literally unbelievable,” said David Wheeler, Executive Director of the Conserve Wildlife Foundation.

The free-range Turducken makes its home in North Haledon on Nature Conservancy land near the summit of the 1,260-ace High Mountain Park Preserve, located in the Watchung Mountains.  46 years ago — On April 1, 1975 — the Royal Scottish Museum announced the discovery of another new species, the Bare-fronted Hoodwink. Photo courtesy of the Royal Scottish Museum Edinburgh.

The first known sighting of the elusive bird was in the woods at the Celery Farm Natural Area in Allendale, N.J., on April 1, 2016, by Joseph Koscielny of Oakland, N.J. Koscielny found a primary feather from the bird nearby, and the AOI sent it by courier pouch to the National Paraphyletic Avian Research Foundation in Patuxent, Md., for DNA testing.

Too good to be true?

Read the full announcement on realjamesbond.net!

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