
THE RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGES OF EUROPE 
Before considering in some detail the red-legged partridges 
resident in Spain, let us look for a moment at the species as a 
whole. The red-legged partridges of western Europe belong to the 
same genus, Alectoris, as does the well-known chukar partridge. Like 
the chukars, redlegs are nonmigratory, adaptable, and (in favorable 
habitat) abundant. In looks the redlegs are superior, for they wear 
a mantle of finely streaked black and white feathers thrown back like 
a cape over their backs, shoulders, and upper breasts. They are 
birds of cultivated or grazed lowlands and of rough, hilly country 
rather than of the abrupt, rocky slopes so dear to the chukars. 
Because their range is much smaller and more contiguous than that of 
the chukars, the red-legged partridges have not become widely 
differentiated; there is but one species, with five subspecies. 
The red-legged partridges are birds of fairly warm and dry 
habitats. Those subspecies resident in Spain and Portugal occupy 
the drier and warmer parts of the redleg range; those in England and 
France the more humid and relatively colder portions. Nowhere are 
they found where the average temperature for the month of January 
falls much below 30°F., where the average annual precipitation is 
much below 10 or above 35 inches, or where snow commonly covers the 
ground for more than a week or 10 days at a time. 
The soil types and pattern of vegetation on and among 
which they live are varied. They occur commonly on sandy, loamy, or 
gravelly soils as well as on chalk or clay. They seem to be equally 
abundant in large, cultivated fields separated by hedgerows or 
broken up by an occasional small, weedy, or brushy patch and in a 
matrix of open fields, brushlands, and forest. They are not, however, 
birds of dense or extensively wooded areas. 
A comparison of the redlegs' native habitat with that 
existing in various parts of the United States indicates that similar 
conditions are to be found mainly in a belt running from eastern 
Texas, Oklahoma, and southern Kansas westward through central Texas 
and northward to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. 
Some areas in southwestern Utah and in central and southern 
California also appear to be favorable for this species. Any attempt 
to acclimatize red-legged partridges east of the Mississippi River or 
north of Kansas and Colorado is almost certainly doomed to failure. 
