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Chukar brings spice to Del Rio
Published June 8, 2008
We don’t normally write about jailbirds here “Abroad,” and besides, a San Antonio lawyer helping one isn’t really news anyway.
But a San Antonio lawyer getting help for a bird at the jail, now, that’s something entirely different.
On Tuesday, I got a call from San Antonio attorney Collis White. Collis asked me if I would mind driving out to The Pet Resort, 104 Currency Drive, near the county jail, and identifying the bird that he had come across outside the jail the night before.
Collis, whom I admire for his courtroom acumen and who is one of my heroes because of his prosecution of the purveyors of “canned hunts” back in the ’80s, said he’d come across a bird outside the jail fence while visiting a client Monday.
He said he and his assistant had been unable to catch the bird, but he enlisted the help of a friend of his at The Pet Resort near the jail, who’d sent some of her assistants out to catch the bird and take it to the boarding facility.
On Tuesday afternoon, I drove out to The Pet Resort and visited with Shawn Pierce, the owner, and her “bird wranglers,” kennel assistants Winona Kroenecke and Jessica Mason.
Shawn said Winona and Jessica were the ones who had actually captured the bird.
She then took me to a kennel at the back of her business where the two young women had deposited the bird.
I brought along my “National Geographic,” hoping I’d be able to identify the bird, which had been described to me as large, gray and quail-like.
Based on Shawn’s description alone, I figured the bird was either a Chukar or a Gray Partridge.
And a Chukar is what is was.
The Chukar is native to Eurasia, but has been widely introduced into areas of the United States, where it has established wild populations in the arid mountain west.
My “National Audubon Society The Sibley Guide to Birds” notes that Chukars are found in rocky desert canyons, while the Gray Partridge, another imported species, can be found in flat agricultural land.
Michael G. has Gray Partridge on his Life List, but I don’t and here’s the reason why: Several years ago, during our annual late-summer trip to see my mother and father, who was still living then, in Fargo, N.D., my younger sister and I decided to visit the Aveda store, located in a newly-built strip mall near the southwestern edge of the city.
The strip mall was close to open fields, and Mike decided to stay in the truck because Aveda is more of a store for girls. While he was waiting for us, he saw several quail-like birds foraging near the edge of the mall parking lot and trained his binoculars on them.
To his surprise, they were birds with which he was unfamiliar, but a quick check of his National Geographic revealed them to be Gray Partridges.
By the time my sister and left the store, the birds had moved on. We had our hair products and new lipsticks, but Mike had another life bird.
Neither of us have Chukars on our Life Lists, and I really can’t count the bird at The Pet Resort, since it was most likely an escapee from a nearby ranch.
Chukars belong to the order Galliformes, a group that includes birds often termed “upland game birds,” such as the turkey, pheasants, grouse and quail.
It is further classified as a member of the family Phasianidae, a group that includes – as you might guess from the name – pheasants, as well as grouse, quail and turkey.
In this family, the Chukar is further placed into a subfamily, called Alectoris, the Chukars.
Christmas Bird Counts have found Chukar in count circles throughout the West – Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.
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Please send your bird photos and bird questions to Karen Gleason at karen.gleason(at)delrionewsherald.com or drop them off at the Del Rio News-Herald office, 2205 Bedell Ave.
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