Chestnut-naped spurfowl


The chestnut-naped spurfowl is a species of bird in the pheasant family Phasianidae. At in length and weighing, it is a large species of spurfowl.
It is found in Ethiopia and northern Somalia. The population is believed to be stable but according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature there is insufficient data to make an estimate of the population.

Taxonomy

The chestnut-naped spurfowl was described in 1888 by the Italian zoologist Tommaso Salvadori based on a specimen collected near "Lago Ciar-Ciar" in the Ahmar Mountains of central Ethiopia. He coined the binomial name Francolinus castaneicollis. The species is now placed in the genus Pternistis that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1832. The specific epithet castaneicollis combines the Latin castaneus meaning "chestnut-brown" and the Modern Latin -collis meaning "necked". The chestnut-naped spurfowl is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.