Galloperdix spadicea
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~20%
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 |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Red Spurfowl sighting in Kozhikode on a given day, based on 44 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 133rd most-seen of the 229 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 20%, if each day is a fresh chance.
October
In that month about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Red Spurfowl in Kozhikode on a given day, against under 5% in November to September, the lowest months. That is one of Kozhikode's wettest months, with about 250 mm of rain against 5 mm in January.
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.
3rd of 6
Of the 6 cities where we can rate Red Spurfowl sightings, Kozhikode ranks 3rd at under 5%. The best odds are in Thrissur (India, about 10%) and Mumbai (India, under 5%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Red Spurfowl is recorded against all the birds logged in Kozhikode (44 verified sightings), 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.
