Rotspornhuhn

Bestimmung

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 Kerala 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.

Taxonomie

The red spurfowl was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the grouse like birds in the genus Tetrao and coined the binomial name Tetrao spadiceus. Gmelin based his description on Pierre Sonnerat'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 and the Sri Lanka spurfowl in the genus Galloperdix that was introduced in 1845 by the English zoologist Edward Blyth. The genus name combines the Latin word gallus for a "farmyard cock" with perdix meaning "partridge". The specific epithet spadicea is from Latin spadix, spadicis meaning "chestnut-coloured" or "date-coloured".<p>Three subspecies are recognised:<p>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.

Wissenschaftlicher Name

Galloperdix spadicea

Autorität

(Gmelin, JF, 1789)

Ordnung

Hühnervögel

Familie

Fasanen (Phasianidae)

Gattung

Galloperdix

Verbreitung und Lebensraum

The species is found in scrub, dry and moist-deciduous forests often in hilly country. They are found south of the Ganges across India. They prefer areas with good undergrowth including those formed by the invasive Lantana.

Zugverhalten

Standvogel

Verhalten

Zugverhalten: Standvogel.

Schutzstatus

Bestandstrend: stabil.

Bestandstrend

stabil