Chukar Partridge

The chukar is a rotund upland partridge 32–35 cm long, with a light brown back, grey breast and buff belly. It has well-marked black and white bars on the flanks and rufous-streaked flanks, a black band running from the forehead across the eye and down the head to form a necklace enclosing a white throat, a white face with a black gorget, red legs and a coral-red bill. Its noisy call, chuck-chuck-chukar-chukar, gives the bird its name (Wikipedia, general species account).

Its native range is in Asia, including India along the inner ranges of the western Himalaya to Nepal, and also Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. SoIB 2023 lists it as a resident and altitudinal migrant of open habitat, rates it a Low conservation priority, and gives a long-term trend of a rapid increase of about 134%, a Moderate range and an inconclusive current trend (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023). The cached account mostly describes introduced birds in North America and gives nothing further specific to India.