Alectoris rufa
Alectoris rufa
The red-legged partridge is a species distributed exclusively in southwestern Europe, occupying the Iberian Peninsula, France, and the northern half of Italy. It has also been introduced to European Mediterranean and Atlantic islands, as well as Great Britain (Keller et al, BirdLife International, 2024). In Spain, it occupies the entire peninsula except for the Atlantic coastal areas, where it is rare. It is very abundant in the southern half, especially in the Mancha plateau, and also present in the northern Ebro valley, the eastern Mediterranean half, and the Guadalquivir valley.
Within the Community of Madrid, it is found throughout the region, except for the urban center of Madrid. It occupies almost all habitat types in the province, although it prefers cereal crops in the south and, to a lesser extent, dehesa oaklands and broom thickets (Díaz et al., 1994; Molina et al. in SEO/BirdLife, 2022).
Within the national park, most records occur on non-forested slopes around the Morcuera Pass. Elsewhere in the park, observations are scattered without a clear distribution pattern.
It is a species typical of semi-natural habitats (agricultural mosaics), but it also occupies open scrub and oak or cork oak areas, as well as dryland crops and woody areas, where densities are lower than in open terrains. The species can be found from sea level up to 2,000 m in altitude. For reproduction, it uses habitats close to cultivated areas, such as patches of scrub, grasslands, and edges with herbaceous vegetation, in areas that can be defined as low-intensity agricultural mosaics (Tapia and Domínguez 2007; Díaz-Fernández et al., 2013).
Within the national park, its highest densities are found in scrub areas, both dense and open, always outside forested zones.
At a global scale, it is considered Near Threatened (NT; 2020). In Europe, it would also be classified in the same category (NT; 2021). In Spain, the peninsular populations are listed as Vulnerable on the 2021 Red List.
The Catalogue of Threatened Species of the Community of Madrid (1992) does not list the species in any threat category.
BirdLife International 2024. IUCN Red List for birds. https://datazone.birdlife.org.
Cabodevilla, X., Estrada, A., Mougeot, F., Jiménez, J. y Arroyo, B. 2021. Farmland composition and farming practices explain spatio-temporal variations in red-legged partridge density in central Spain. The Science of the Total Environment, 799: 149106.
Díaz, M., Martí, R., Gómez-Manzaneque, Á. y Sánchez, A. 1994. Atlas de las aves nidificantes en Madrid. Agencia de Medio Ambiente y SEO/BirdLife. Madrid.
Díaz-Fernández, S., Arroyo, B., Casas, F., Haro, M., y Viñuela, J. 2013. Effect of management on wild red-legged partridge abundance. PLOS One 8(6): e66671.
Keller, V., Herrando, S., Voříšek, P., Franch, M., Kipson, M., Milanesi, P., Martí, D., Antón, M., Klvaňová, A., Kalyakin, M. V. Bauer, H. Gr y Foppen, R. P. B. 2020. European Breeding Bird Atlas 2: Distribution, Abundance and Change. European Birds Census Council y Lynx Edicions. Barcelona.
SEO/BirdLife (Molina, B., Nebreda, A, Muñoz, A. R., Seoane, J., Real, R. Bustamante, J. y Del Moral, J. C. eds.). 2022. III Atlas de las aves en época de reproducción en España. SEO/BirdLife. Madrid.
Tapia, L. y Domínguez, J. 2007. Broad-scale habitat use by red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) in a low-density area in northwestern Spain. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 53: 178-182.