Species group · Birds

Partridges

WAnimals has 5 species of partridge, spread across 2 families (Phasianidae, Tinamidae).

5 species

2 families

80 countries

105 parks

All 5 species of partridges on WAnimals

Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.

3 Least Concern1 Vulnerable1 Endangered

2 species in this group are in a threatened category according to the IUCN.

Recorded in 80 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:

In Iberia it survives only high in the mountains, cut off from the rest of Europe.
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Its decline is the classic case study of the impact of intensive farming on wildlife: the chicks need insects for their first two weeks, and the herbicides that removed the weeds removed with them the insects they depended on.
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It lays one of the largest clutches of any bird: up to twenty eggs in a single laying, a strategy suited to extremely high juvenile mortality.
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In Spain its release for shooting has genetically contaminated the red-legged partridge: the hybrids are fertile and many Iberian populations already carry chukar genes, a textbook case of genetic pollution through game restocking.
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Chicks only a few days old climb slopes of more than forty degrees by beating their wings as they run, a movement called wing-assisted incline running that has been proposed as a model for how flight may have originated in dinosaurs.
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Its name is onomatopoeic in several Asian languages, after the chak-chak-chukar it repeats from the hillsides.
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It eats seeds, grain and plants, supplemented with small invertebrates.