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, curassows and chachalacas | Cracidae10 speciesIn Mexico and Central America the family numbers ten species in six genera, from the noisy chachalacas of scrub and forest edge to the guans and the Great Curassow of tall forest and the Horned Guan, found only in cloud forest in the mountains of Chiapas and Guatemala. They are gamebirds that, unlike their relatives, live mainly in trees: the tail is long and broad, the legs are sturdy and the hind toe sits level with the front toes, so they walk and clamber easily along branches. Many species have bare throat skin or a coloured dewlap, and in curassows the male carries a crest of curled feathers and a yellow knob on the bill. They feed mainly on fruit, leaves and flowers and are important seed dispersers. Chachalacas call in chorus at dawn, guans make a dry rattle with their wings in flight, and in several species the windpipe is elongated, producing deep booming and whistling notes. The nest is an untidy platform in a tree or shrub, holding two or three large white eggs with a rough shell. Hunting has made the larger species scarce almost everywhere.
New World quail | Odontophoridae22 speciesSmall, round-bodied gamebirds whose lower mandible has a serrated cutting edge, which gives the family its name. The leg carries no spur and is short and sturdy, suited to scratching and digging in the soil for seeds, tubers, berries and insects. Many species have a crest or a forward-curving plume on the head, and in most the male is more boldly marked than the female, often with a striking black-and-white face pattern. The family is found only in the Americas, and Mexico and Central America are especially rich in it: from the bobwhites and crested quails of open scrub and dry country to the wood-quails and wood-partridges of cloud forest and rainforest, which are rarely seen and are mostly heard at dawn and dusk, sometimes in duet or in chorus. They nest on the ground, often under a canopy of grass, and outside the breeding season live in fixed coveys that keep together with clear, far-carrying calls. When threatened they first crouch flat and flush explosively only at the last moment.
Partridges, pheasants, grouse and allies | 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.