Janet Turner was an American university-based artist interested in art education. She was intially a painter, but her interest in printmaking was given new impetus when she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952 to experiment with combining linocuts with screenprinting to make prints of Gulf Coast flora and fauna. This print dates from that period. A love of botany preceded Janet Turner's interest in art and her work expresses her deep fascination with the natural world and with biological and ecological relationships. She once said "I am awed by the richness of nature, interested in details of fur and feathers, which have meaning because they evolved from the reationship of one thing to another. I am commenting on the power of man and the instability of his social structures".

In creating 'Guinea Fowl' she had watched the birds roosting, each one jostling to roost higher than another, even though the topmost one was the most vulnerable. She felt that this was a symbolic arrangement and subtitled part of the edition "The Climbing Conformists". She felt that 'Guinea Fowls' was one of her most successful works.

Linocutting is a relief printing method which developed in the twentieth century from woodcutting. Linoleum is easier to cut than wood and linocutting does not require expensive equipment. It has therefore been widely used as a medium to teach printmaking. Janet Turner has printed this image by superimposing five different linoleum blocks to build up the wonderful detail and texture in the colours and lines.