
touched with pink; skin of head bluish or fleshy-red; bill dark horny- 
brown, the base and gonys reddish; legs and feet greenish-gray to deep 
slaty-brown equipped with long, often curved, very sharp spurs. 
"Female 
"Top of the head blackish-brown, the feathers broadly edged 
with golden-yellow; in most birds the forehead is more or less metallic 
crimson, this sheen being produced back as supercilia to behind the 
ear-coverts, where they widen and meet on the foreneck as a broad 
gorget; feathers of nape orange-yellow with broad blackish centres, 
changing to pale golden-yellow on the longer hackles; upper plumage, 
wing-coverts and inner secondaries reddish-buff or reddish-brown with 
pale shafts and dark brown vermiculations; primaries dark brown edged 
with rufous; tail dark brown, mottled with dull rufous, absent on the 
outer pairs; breast dull Indian red with pale shaft-lines shading to 
dull cinnamon on the abdomen, much vermiculated with brown; under tail- 
coverts black or blackish-brown. 
"Iris brown; comb and small wattles, sometimes absent, dull 
crimson; bill horny-brown, base and gape plumbeous-fleshy. The legs 
and feet are greenish-gray to deep slaty-brown usually with no, or at 
best rudimentary spurs." 
Crossbreeds 
In India, crosses between village poultry and wild red 
junglefowl are not always easy to recognize. Halfbreeds that otherwise 
resemble wild birds may often be identified by the absence of white 
ear lobes, of the white tuft at the base of the tail, legs that show 
a touch of yellow and by the erect rather than nearly horizontal 
carriage of the sickle-shaped tail. 
Size and Weight 
Wild red junglefowl males resemble well-conditioned fighting 
cocks in size and weight. Hume (8) gives the length of the male as 
25.0 to 28.2 inches; the female as 16.5 to 18.25 inches. Adult males 
will weigh from 1.5 to 2.0 pounds; females are slightly smaller. As 
with the ring-necked pheasants, after several generations in captivity, 
these birds tend to become heavier. 
