Thanks for linking that paper; very handy to have here.
All fieldwork is difficult and most of the complaints you make apply to both papers of course. Lots of gaps, assumptions, uncertainties. But better than nothing, or 'results' from artificial and manufactured set ups imo. I don't think there's anything to be gained from further nit-picking over terms.
However, I do have to register some disquiet I feel over the Collias' reliance on crowing as identifier and locator. I have lived with all my roos for their entire lives, and while their voices are different, only a couple of them are sufficiently distinct to my ear for me to be able to say with confidence that a given crow was X's. Lulea's is very croaky, Merioneth's is deep (like Glais'), and Hensol's is very squeeky; I know Fforest's but I don't have the words to say how I recognize his crow as his. But if I was behind a screen I couldn't distinguish Killay's from Gwynedd's or Tintern's or Nefyn's or Wig's or Talgarth's. And I hear these every day, and can see the birds a lot of the time.
The Collias' fieldwork methodology starts with "We located jungle fowl by cruising the roads and especially by listening for the dawn crowing. Counts of crowing made throughout the day enabled us to trace the movements of the birds to some degree, as well as to gain some idea of differences in local abundance." Reliance on this method was very heavy. "During the last month of the study we obtained a collecting and banding permit, and managed to net and color-band a dozen jungle fowl. But these birds were not seen again." There were other pitfalls. "We often found it difficult to locate birds and roosts by the dawn crowing because the birds shifted to another roosting spot after we had discovered and disturbed them." So the findings are based on "we located and mapped with aid of a compass all the nearby roosts from the roof of the Dholkhand Forest Rest House by the sound of crowing only, and we did not attempt to approach directly any of these roosts until the last month of the study." And the sample is tiny: "There were four of these nearby roosts, and their distribution as determined by compass triangulation from the forest rest house (dak bungalow) is shown in figure 2. The composition of the four flocks during May or early June in terms of adult males and females, including subgrouping within each, was as follows: NE Flock, IM + lF, 1M; East Flock, 1M + 2 F; South Flock, 1M + 3F, 4M; and SW Flock, 1M + 3F, 3M." So that's 2 flocks of 3, 1 flock of 8 (5 males and 3 females in it btw), and 1 of 7 (4 males and 3 females). By subgroups they seem to mean subordinate adult males in the flock.
Crucial assumptions here: "Since subordinate cocks normally crow much less than does the dominant cock of a flock, most of the crowings recorded are believed to have come from a single bird. Furthermore, subordinate cocks during the breeding season are usually kept at some distance from the hen by the dominant cock. Therefore, if more than one cock in the flock had usually been crowing, the sounds often would have seemed to come from different directions." How far apart is a different direction? "Movements of a flock were determined by estimating the direction and location of a crowing male from a machan in which the observer was hidden. The exact time and approximate location of crowings were then plotted on a map." Hmmm.
Crowing as proxy for identity and location apart, I'm not sure why we are obsessing over flock size when the gender balance of these flocks is what stands out as so at variance with what is considered a normal flock on BYC, to wit 1 male and multiple females. For those interested, Table 1 on p. 365 gives the numbers, with the sex ratios each month April to June as 23:33, 51:25, and 23:32 (total: 102M : 90F).
Also interesting to read that the wing drop was performed after mating: "Perhaps as a result of the extreme wariness of the birds, only two copulations of jungle fowl were seen, one on 14 April at 18:00 as mentioned above, the other on 15 April at about noon (12: 10). In each case there was very little preliminary action apparent, although the hen crouched just before the male mounted. Copulation closely resembled the pattern seen among domestic chickens and took only a moment or two. On dismounting, the jungle cock circled the hen about one-fourth of the way while facing her and at the same time half dropping the outer wing, i.e., the one on the side opposite the hen, in an incipient wing-flutter. The hen meanwhile shook herself just as a domestic hen does after copulation. In the second observed copulation, it was noted that shortly after mating, the cock began to scratch about in the leaf litter and feed for the first time in over 10 minutes, and soon after copulation the hen resumed scratching."
Finally, and also relevant to recent discussions: "We have seen partly grown chicks “play fighting” in the manner familiar in domestic chicks. We have no idea how long Red Jungle Fowl chicks stay with the mother in nature. In captivity the period of association with the mother is at least three months, by which time all the down has disappeared from the body except on the chin and upper throat." Go Paprika!
) and pullets' voices. The EEs can be tough, because they're generally quiet and squeaky, but I can and do imitate the other three and we have nice convos (about what, I don't know.) They recognize the sound of my car and we greet each other through the wooden fence when I get home.
