Galloperdix spadicea
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~30%
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 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.
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... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Periyar National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Kanha National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 3 | Nagarhole National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 4 | Bandhavgarh National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 5 | Mudumalai National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Satpura National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 7 | Bandipur National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 8 | Eravikulam National Park | 🇮🇳 India |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Red Spurfowl sighting in Bandipur National Park on a given day, based on 53 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 139th most-seen of the 256 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 30%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January and March
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Red Spurfowl in Bandipur National Park on a given day, against under 5% in February, April–June, August–October and December, the lowest months. Those are among Bandipur National Park's driest months, with about 15 mm of rain a month against 210 mm in July.
Between 3 and 6 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Red Spurfowl sightings with a recorded time, and about half of them come between 6 pm and 6 am: it is most active around dawn and dusk.
7th of 8
Of the 8 parks where we can rate Red Spurfowl sightings, Bandipur National Park ranks 7th at about 10%. The best odds are in Periyar National Park (India, about 20%), Kanha National Park (India, about 10%) and Nagarhole National Park (India, about 10%).
Same family: Phasianidae
The closest relatives of the Red Spurfowl that you can see in Bandipur National Park (family Phasianidae, Pheasants, Grouse, and Allies) are Common Peafowl (about 70%), Grey Junglefowl (about 50%) and Grey Francolin (about 20%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Red Spurfowl is recorded against all the birds logged in Bandipur National Park (53 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
