It has adapted to alien vegetation and a variety of human-altered habitats, but scrubby roosting and nesting space is a prerequisite.

[4] Six years later in 1789, when the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin updated Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included a terse description of the Cape spurfowl, coined the binomial name Tetrao capensis and cited Latham's work.

Its presence in scrub along the banks of the lower Orange and Fish Rivers appears to be a natural phenomenon.

[2] The Cape francolin is a bird of scrubby open areas, preferably close to running water.

[9] This large spurfowl appears all dark from a distance, apart from the red legs, but when seen closer the plumage is finely vermiculated in grey and white, with a plainer crown and nape.