Galloperdix spadicea
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
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 Mudumalai National Park on a given day, based on 72 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 138th most-seen of the 233 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January
In that month about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Red Spurfowl in Mudumalai National Park on a given day, against under 5% in March, July–October and December, the lowest months. That is one of Mudumalai National Park's driest months, with about 25 mm of rain against 230 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.
5th of 8
Of the 8 parks where we can rate Red Spurfowl sightings, Mudumalai National Park ranks 5th 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 Mudumalai National Park (family Phasianidae, Pheasants, Grouse, and Allies) are Common Peafowl (about 60%), Grey Junglefowl (about 40%) 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 Mudumalai National Park (72 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.
