This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||
|
Chukars are widely unknown among alot of people, and those that do know them regard them only as something to shoot for fun. A few years ago I discovered that Chukars make wonderful indoor pets. I fould a tiny one on the road, nearly dead, and nursed it back to health. When we made an attempt to release it, she would make a distress call and rush back inside. These birds are loyal to an extreme. They latch onto one person with whom they stick with to the best of their ability, but unlike parrots who tend to do the same thing, they are still friendly to other people, and don't go around attacking everyone that isn't their best friend. We allowed kui to roam around the house. Her droppings weren't a problem, as once we stopped giving her chicken feed and allowed her to eat grass, insects and small stones they were soft pellets like guinea pig droppings rather than runny, smelly chicken poop. She would follow me everywhere, and if I ever got out of her sight she would start screaming "chuck chuck chukar!" Until she found me again. She could also be encouraged to sing a hideous duet if you whistled a tune. She would fly up onto my shoulder from the ground, and always slept right on top of me at night, pecking and scratching to get comfortable, to my irritation. She loved to be pet, and closed her eyes and leaned hard against your petting hand like a dog. I even walked her outside on a leash and harness. Owning one chukar is the best way to get the most loyal pet, but it might be more pracitcal to keep a minimum of three in a barn or indoor pen. The downsides to owning only one chukar by itself as an indoor pet are firstly, the fact that in their mind, they never grow up and are always still a baby. A chukar kept alone with humans never stops making 'baby sounds.' I have never heard of a chicken that continued peeping like a chick for the rest of it's life, but my chukar essentialy never grew up, and when compared with wild or ranch chukars still made 'adult sounds,' but never abandoned the 'cheep cheep cheep' of a baby that un-socialized chukars stop making as soon as they are weaned. I don't know if this is because she is still so tiny in comparison to human beings, which she is sure she will look like when she has reached her final stage of life; or if it is because I always babied her so much, giving her food, and sleeping with her without any attempts to run her off. A seocnd anti-perk of owning one Chukar alone is their tremendous amount of need to constantly see you, and when they get tired or scared they MUST be RIGHT ON you, or touching some part of your body. Chukars are flock animals, and being alone puts them in a constant state of fear and distress that doesn't go away over time like it would a human or other animal. Seperation anxiety is a constant, and it's like having a conjoined twin. You can't even shower alone, and expect to have her standing on your knee grunting at you while you sit on the toilet. If you plan to own only one Chukar, you had better be retired, homeschooled, or invalid and unable to work. Another downside is their nosy busybody nature. If you have something in your hands, they won't leave you alone until they've seen it for themselves. Try reading a newspaper without having it repeatedly pecked from the other side. Chukars are flock animals, and know when and what to eat and play with by watching their elder birds, (read: you.) If you're eating, they will pester you with 'pee-pee-peep!' and jumping repeatedly to the food until they've had a bite, too. It is not possible to train them out of it. This goes double for milk. I don't know why chukars crave milk as much as they do, as birds never get milk in the wild. Bathe your chukar's head daily if you don't want dirty milk. Chukars don't sip, they dunk-and-glug. Another downside, if you wind up owning a female chukar, they start laying at the age of four months or so, regardless of contact with a male. Our chukar had never laid eyes on another bird, and the eggs were everywhere. Not only that, but as they are obscessed with you, they will lay them in areas you frequent, assuming that you will guard the eggs and share nest duty. Chukars will consider their best friend as their mate, but unlike swans, peacocks, roosters, and other ground fowl, won't try any hanky-panky. When kui started laying, every morning I would find an egg in each shoe. After I started collecting them and placing them under a lamp to dry, she started laying them in the bed, then under the bed, then on my computer keyboard, trying to find the right place to appease me. Anything I touched on a daily basis. She even laid one in my lap, once. The eggs are the size of a bantam chicken's egg, and are good for eating. They have less of a 'sulpherous' taste than chicken eggs, and are slightly sweet. Another downside is that you cannot cage a chukar. I tried caging Kui and it was horrible. She paced back and forth, fighting the bars until she'd scraped every feather from the top of her head. She cried all day and all night, and it was the most horrible thing I feel I've ever done to her. You must not ever cage your chukar, it is horribly wrong and abusive, the equivailant of burying a human being alive. You are EVERYTHING to them, their entire world, and it is important that they are never left completely alone. If you're going to get a chukar, be prepared for the best friend you ever had, a huge amount of unconditional love, and constant grooming, snuggling and love-grumbling. But also be prepared to sleep with it, shower with it, share food from your plate and be on the constant look out so you don't step on them. They aren't very intelligent birds, but they are very affectionate, and there is alot to know about them. I reccommend taking a closer look at them as companion/barnyard animals, rather than just something to shoot at.
Vuoripyy
editVuoripyy on sellainen lintu, joka elää mm vuoristossa Kurdistanissa, Pakistanissa, Afganistanissa, Kishmirissa Kanadassa,.. muassa paikoissa.Se on kana pienempi lintu ja siillä on hyvä ääni. sillä on punaine nikka. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.148.239.162 (talk) 07:49, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
As pets
editI've learned that "keklik" are kept as pets in Turkey, based on being told this by Turks, and then actually meeting a pet partridge. Unfortunately, because "turkey" is the name of another game bird, it isn't really easy to find information on this, and I don't know how common it is. If anybody knows a reliable source talking about this, preferably in English, that would be awesome. --Quintucket (talk) 19:02, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Evolution of wings...
editAccording to the "bird flight" article, young birds of this species were used in experiments that suggested a novel mechanism for how bird flight developed, I'm wondering if that should be mentioned somewhere on this page or not... Tamtrible (talk) 00:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
- Done. Snori (talk) 02:12, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Sarcasm?
editThis line "The chukar is the national bird of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and shares that title for Pakistan with Predator drones.[41][42]" under "In Culture" looks rather like a wikipedian has taken someone else's sarcasm for a straight fact, perhaps through working in a second language.
Alternatively, they imported a sarcastic joke directly into this article, knowingly.
It's pretty funny so I'm leaving it untouched. But it might ultimately not be appropriate here.
I am attuned to this sort of thing- Long ago I took a historian's written snarky comment that a senior Canadian air force officer had studied in "The US Air Force school of public relations" a little too literally. It's easy to do- and I'm a native English speaker. Random noter (talk) 16:58, 16 December 2020 (UTC)