Painted Spurfowl

The painted spurfowl is a spurfowl of rocky hills and scrub forest, unlike the red spurfowl in that it has no bare facial skin. The male is more brightly coloured, with a black tail and ochre underparts against darker upperparts, and boldly white-spotted plumage with each spot edged in black. Males have two to four spurs on the tarsus and females one or two. It lives mainly in peninsular India, in parts of the Aravalli ranges in Rajasthan, the hills of central India (Pachmarhi) and the rocky hills and dry forests of the south (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is found in the undergrowth in pairs or small groups and escapes by running, rarely flying. The call is a loud, repeated series of chuguk notes. It feeds on berries, including Ziziphus oenoplia and Lantana camara, and on insects and flowers, and visits waterholes early in the morning. The nest is a scrape lined with leaves, often below a boulder, with three or four, rarely five, pale creamy eggs incubated by the female alone. SoIB 2023 rates it a Low conservation priority, with a stable long-term trend (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).