Gamebirds | Galliformes

Hoenderachtigen | Gallináceas

Heavy-bodied ground birds with a short arched bill, powerful legs and blunt claws, used to scratch and dig for food in leaf litter and bare soil; the night is usually spent high in trees or on rock. The wings are short and rounded and the flight muscles pale: they give an explosive take-off and a short fast flight but no stamina, so most species spend their whole lives within a small area. Seeds, bulbs, tubers and greenery are ground up in a heavy gizzard with the aid of swallowed grit and broken down further in a pair of long caeca. In many species the head and neck carry bare skin, combs or wattles, and the male's tarsus may bear one or more spurs. The clutch is large, the nest a scrape on the ground under a grass tuft or bush, and the downy chicks follow at once; their flight feathers grow so fast that they can flutter up within a few days.

Families in this order

Guans, chachalacas and curassows | Cracidae2 speciesCurassows, guans and chachalacas form a family of gamebirds found almost exclusively in the tropics of Central and South America. Unlike most gamebirds they live largely in trees: they have a long tail, short, rounded wings and a long hind toe set at the same level as the front toes, which gives them a firm grip on branches. They eat fruit, leaves and buds and so disperse seeds. The nest is a small platform of twigs in a tree or shrub, with few eggs; the chicks can flutter after only a few days. Two species live in the region. The Rufous-vented Chachalaca (Ortalis ruficauda) is olive-brown with a grey head and rufous undertail coverts and occurs on Tobago and a few islands of the Grenadines; groups call mainly in the morning in a loud, rhythmic chorus. The Trinidad Piping Guan or pawi (Pipile pipile), blackish with a white crest, a white wing patch and a blue throat wattle, is rare and confined to forest on Trinidad.
Guineafowl | Numididae1 speciesHead and neck are unfeathered and coloured blue, white or red: in the species of open country topped by a horny casque and hung with wattles, in the forest species by a tuft of black curled feathers and with a red eye set in blue skin. The rest of the plumage is slate-grey to black and peppered over almost the whole body with white pearl spots, larger and bluish in the forest species; male and female are marked much alike, which is unusual among gamebirds. They move in tight flocks through savanna, farmland and forest edge, raking open the litter and digging out bulbs, tubers and insects with bill and feet; when disturbed the flock scatters on foot and takes wing only when the distance closes. Towards evening they climb with clattering wings to traditional roost trees, setting up a loud rasping chorus that carries far; the same sound serves as an alarm and often betrays a predator before it can be seen. The clutch lies in a shallow scrape under a grass tuft, the eggshell is thick and hard, and the chicks walk within a day but are highly vulnerable to cold rain.
New World quail | Odontophoridae2 speciesSmall, rounded gamebirds found only in the Americas, whose lower mandible has a serrated cutting edge, the feature the family is named for. The tarsus carries no spur and is short and sturdy, suited to scratching in the soil. Many species have a crest or plume on the head, and the male is more sharply marked than the female, with a pronounced face pattern. Two species of the genus Colinus occur in the region. Northern Bobwhite is native on Cuba; on some other islands, such as Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and the Bahamas, the populations go back to introductions. Crested Bobwhite, a species of northern South America, occurs on Aruba and Curaçao. Both live in open, dry or rough country with scrub and field edges. 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; the male advertises with a whistled call.
Pheasants and partridges | Phasianidae3 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.