Black-fronted spurfowl


The black-fronted spurfowl is a bird species in the family Phasianidae. It is a large species of francolin. It is endemic to Ethiopia. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the chestnut-naped spurfowl.

Taxonomy

The black-fronted spurfowl was described in 1930 by the American amateur ornithologist Boardman Conover from a specimen collected in the mountains around Mega in the south of Ethiopia near the border with Kenya. He coined the binomial name Francolinus atrifons. The species is now placed in the genus Pternistis that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1832. The specific epithet atrifrons combines the Latin ater meaning "black" and frons meaning "forehead". The black-fronted spurfowl was formerly considered a subspecies of the chestnut-naped spurfowl. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.