The ferruginous partridge (''Caloperdix oculeus'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in the family Phasianidae. It belongs to the monotypical genus ''Caloperdix''. It is found in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, and

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

Taxonomy

The ferruginous partridge was originally described by Coenraad Jacob Temminck in 1815, who described it as ''Perdix oculea''. The specific name ''oculea'' is a reference to the Latin ''oculus'' for eyes, meaning that it was full of eyes or dotted with coloured spots. The species was moved to the monotypic genus ''Caloperdix'' in 1861 by Edward Blyth. The generic name is derived from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

''kalos'' for beautiful and ''perdikos'' for partridge.Jobling, J. A. (2018)
Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology
In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.) (2018). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from www.hbw.com). The species has three described subspecies: *''C. o. oculeus'' Temminck, 1815 *''C. o. ocellatus'' Raffles, 1822 *''C. o. borneensis'' Ogilvie-Grant, 1892

Distribution and habitat

The ferruginous partridge is found in a variety of

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s, including

tropical dry forest The tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest is a habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature and is located at tropical and subtropical latitudes. Though these forests occur in climates that are warm year-round, and may receive ...

and

tropical moist lowland forest Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Description TSMF is generally found in large, discon ...

, secondary scrub and secondary bamboo growth. It is found from sea-level to .McGowan, P.J.K. & Kirwan, G.M. (2019)
Ferruginous Partridge (''Caloperdix oculeus'')
In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from https://www.hbw.com/node/53466 on 23 February 2019). The ferruginous partridge ranges from southern Myanmar through the

Kra Isthmus The Kra Isthmus ( th, คอคอดกระ, ) in Thailand is the narrowest part of the Malay Peninsula. The western part of the isthmus belongs to Ranong Province and the eastern part to Chumphon Province, both in Southern Thailand. The ...

into the Malay Peninsula, as well as

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and ea ...

and Sumatra.

Description

The ferruginous partridge measures from in length and weighs between . The plumage is distinctive, having a rufous head, breast and belly and black scaled with white upper back and sides of breast and flanks. The wings are brown with black spots, and the rest of the back is black scaled with rufous. The sexes are similar except the male has two spurs and the female just one.

Behaviour

The ferruginous partridge forages in small pairs or alone for seeds, fruits, grasses and insects. Very little is known about its breeding behaviour; the clutch size is 8-10 pure white eggs laid in a domed nest.

Status

The ferruginous partridge is believed to be declining across its range due to

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

, and has therefore been assessed as near threatened with

extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q431885 ferruginous partridge ferruginous partridge Birds of Malesia ferruginous partridge Taxonomy articles created by Polbot