Gamebirds | Galliformes

Hoenderachtigen | Gallináceas

Heavy-bodied ground birds with a short arched bill and powerful legs with blunt claws, used to scratch and rake through leaf litter. The wings are short and rounded: these birds rarely travel far, but burst noisily off the ground when alarmed and drop back in a little further on. The food is largely seeds, buds, rootstocks and greenery, ground up in a muscular gizzard with the help of swallowed grit and broken down further in a pair of long caeca. Clutches are large, the nest is a scrape on the ground, and the downy chicks follow the hen at once; their flight feathers grow so fast that most can flutter up within a few days.

Families in this order

Guineafowl | Numididae1 speciesHead and neck are bare skin, usually topped by a horny casque or a tuft of bristly feathers and in some species hung with wattles; that naked skin helps shed heat in open, hot country. The plumage is dark and peppered over almost the whole body with white pearl spots, and male and female look much alike, unlike most other gamebirds. The build is stocky, with a short thick bill and powerful legs used to dig out bulbs and tubers. Outside the breeding season they live in tight flocks that would rather run than fly when disturbed, and roost in trees at night.
New World quail | Odontophoridae2 speciesSmall, rounded gamebirds whose lower mandible has a serrated cutting edge — the feature the family is named for. The tarsus carries no spur, unlike that of most Old World gamebirds, and is short and thick, suited to digging in the soil. Many species have a crest or a forward-curving plume on the head, and the male is more sharply marked than the female, with a pronounced black-and-white face pattern. They nest on the ground, lay large clutches, and outside the breeding season live in settled coveys that keep in contact with clear, far-carrying calls.
Pheasants and partridges | Phasianidae21 speciesThe largest and most varied family in the order: in many species the male carries one or more sharp spurs on the tarsus and is clearly bigger and more colourful than the cryptically marked female, with elongated tail or neck feathers and bare coloured skin on the head. Where the sexes look alike — in the smaller partridges and quails — those spurs are usually absent and the pair stays together; where they differ strongly, the female incubates alone. The nest is no more than a scraped hollow, hidden by the pattern of the sitting bird itself, and the clutch can run well into double figures. The primaries are moulted from the innermost outwards, so the bird never loses altogether what limited flying power it has.