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

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.
Pheasants and partridges | Phasianidae23 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.