Diet and Foraging

The Long-tailed Wood-Partridge feeds mainly on seeds and small fruits, occasionally on small arthropods and leaves. It is primarily a ground forager, scratching the leaf litter and humus, but also climbs up to low branches of trees and brushes in search of food (G. C-L. pers. obs). Young birds may take mainly soft arthropods during their first days (Johnsgard 1988).

Leopold (1959) collected a specimen that had the crop full of legume seeds, mainly Desmodium. Warner (1959) found flowers, flower buds, small green fruits and seeds in the digestive tract of one bird; others contained similar vegetable matter and arthropod remains. More than 80% in volume of the crop of a bird from Nuevo Parangaricutiro, Michoacán, collected June 1999, were seeds of a shrub, Coriaria ruscifolia; the rest included seeds of Quercus sp. and arthropod parts (G. C-L. pers. obs.). Another specimen from the same area, examined in June 2000, only had small green leaves, possibly Aegopogon sp., an herbaceous plant (G- C-L. pers. obs.).

There are no studies on quantitative diet composition and food habit during different seasons, nor estimates of daily food composition rates (g/day), mean energy intake (kcal/day), or oxygen consumption (cm²O/g-hr).