The red spurfowl (''Galloperdix spadicea'') is a member of the pheasant family and is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to India. It is a bird of forests, and is quite secretive despite its size. It has a distinctive call and is often hard to see except for a few seconds when it flushes from the undergrowth. It appears reddish and like a long-tailed partridge. The bare skin around the eye is reddish. The legs of both males and females have one or two spurs, which give them their name.

Taxonomy

The red spurfowl was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist

Johann Friedrich Gmelin , fields = , workplaces = University of GöttingenUniversity of Tübingen , alma_mater = University of Tübingen , doctoral_advisor = Philipp Friedrich GmelinFerdinand Christoph Oetinger , academic_advisors = , doctora ...

in his revised and expanded edition of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

's ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

''. He placed it with all the grouse like birds in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

Tetrao ''Tetrao'' is a genus of birds in the grouse subfamily known as capercaillies. They are some of the largest living grouse. Taxonomy The genus ''Tetrao'' was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his ...

'' and coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Tetrao spadiceus''. Gmelin based his description on

Pierre Sonnerat Pierre Sonnerat (18 August 1748 – 31 March 1814) was a French natural history, naturalist, colonial administrator, writer and List of explorers, explorer. He described numerous species of plants and animals on his travels and is honoured in th ...

's "La perdrix rouge de Madagascar". Gmelin specified the type locality as Madagascar. This is an error, the species is found in India. The red spurfowl is now placed with

painted spurfowl The painted spurfowl (''Galloperdix lunulata'') is a bird of the pheasant family found in rocky hill and scrub forests mainly in peninsular India. Males are more brightly coloured and spotted boldly in white. Males have two to four spurs while fe ...

and the

Sri Lanka spurfowl The Sri Lanka spurfowl (''Galloperdix bicalcarata'') is a member of the pheasant family which is endemic to the dense rainforests of Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, this bird is known as - in Sinhala. It is a very secretive bird, and despite its si ...

in the genus ''

Galloperdix ''Galloperdix'' is a genus of three species of bird in the pheasant family, Phasianidae. These terrestrial birds are restricted to the Indian Subcontinent, with the red spurfowl and painted spurfowl in forest and scrub in India, and the Sri Lanka ...

'' that was introduced in 1845 by the English zoologist

Edward Blyth Edward Blyth (23 December 1810 – 27 December 1873) was an English zoologist who worked for most of his life in India as a curator of zoology at the museum of the Asiatic Society of India in Calcutta. Blyth was born in London in 1810. In 1841 ...

. The genus name combines the Latin word ''gallus'' for a "farmyard cock" with ''perdix'' meaning "partridge". The specific epithet ''spadicea'' is from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''spadix'', ''spadicis'' meaning "chestnut-coloured" or "date-coloured". Three

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

are recognised: * ''G. s. spadicea'' (Gmelin, JF, 1789) – west Nepal and north, central India * ''G. s. caurina'' Blanford, 1898 – south

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern si ...

(west India) * ''G. s. stewarti'' Baker, ECS, 1919 – central, south

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

(south India) In colouration, the females show clinal variation becoming darker towards the south of their range. The name used in Marathi was recorded as ''Kokee-tree'' and is probably onomatopoeic.

Description

Overall reddish-brown, this large partridge-like bird has a somewhat long tail. The upper parts are brown with dark barring while the face and neck are more grey in the male. The underside is rufous with dark markings and both sexes have a red facial skin patch and red legs with one or two spurs (rarely three or four while females may have none). Downy chicks have an unmarked cinnamon brown head, a dark brown band along the back bordered by creamy stripes edged with thin lines of dark brown. The male of the distinctive

race, ''G. s. stewarti'' has all-chestnut plumage, including the head feathers. Both sexes have long feathers on the crown that can be erected into a crest.

Distribution and habitat

The species is found in scrub, dry and moist-deciduous forests often in hilly country. They are found south of the

Ganges The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is ...

across

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. They prefer areas with good undergrowth including those formed by the invasive ''

Lantana ''Lantana'' () is a genus of about 150 species of perennial flowering plants in the verbena family, Verbenaceae. They are native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa but exist as an introduced species in numerous areas, especially in ...

''.

Behaviour and ecology

Red spurfowl usually forage in small parties of three to five. When walking around, the tail is sometimes held vertical as in domestic fowl. They are quite silent in the day but call in the mornings and evenings. They feed on fallen seeds, berries,

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

s and insects apart from swallowing grit to aid digestion. When flushed, the usually fly a short distance and stay in well-defined territories throughout the year. They roost in trees. The calls include a distinct ''ker-wick...kerwick...'' and harsh ''karr...karrr...'' notes. The Marathi name ''Kokatri'' is echoic in origin. The breeding season is January to June, mainly before the rains. A ground nesting bird, it lays 3-5

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

s in a scrape. Males are monogynous which usually indicates greater male investment in parental duties but they do not incubate. Males have been observed to distract the attention of predators when females with chicks are nearby. The widespread nematode ''

Heterakis gallinae ''Heterakis'' is a genus of parasitic nematodes. Members of the genus are minute roundworms ( pinworms), hardly 1 cm long, infecting different species of gallinaceous birds, including chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, grouse, guineafowl, p ...

'' has been recorded in the species in captivity while

Ixodid The Ixodidae are the family of hard ticks or scale ticks, one of the three families of ticks, consisting of over 700 species. They are known as 'hard ticks' because they have a scutum or hard shield, which the other major family of ticks, the 'sof ...

ticks have been noted in the wild. A species of helminth '' Lerouxinema lerouxi'' has been described with the red spurfowl as type host. Keratinophilic fungi such as ''

Ctenomyces serratus ''Ctenomyces serratus'' is a keratinophilic fungal soil saprotroph classified by the German mycologist, Michael Emil Eduard Eidam in 1880, who found it growing on an old decayed feather. Many accounts have shown that it has a global distributio ...

'' have been noted from the species.

References

External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1269712

red spurfowl The red spurfowl (''Galloperdix spadicea'') is a member of the pheasant family and is endemic to India. It is a bird of forests, and is quite secretive despite its size. It has a distinctive call and is often hard to see except for a few seconds ...

Birds of India Endemic birds of India