This francolin lives on rocky hillsides in Namibia and Angola. Males and females differ in their underpart pattern and the feathers beneath the tail.
The male has mottled buff-brown upperparts, white underparts streaked with brown, and a long white eyebrow. The female is similar but has unstreaked cinnamon underparts and lacks the barring beneath the tail.
Hartlaub’s Spurfowl lives in rocky country in Namibia and Angola. In Erongo, repeated observations placed birds among broken rocks mixed with vegetation.
During a two-month study in 2009, calls were heard on nine of ten morning visits, but only three of thirteen evening visits. The frequency of calling thus differed markedly between dawn and dusk in this rocky landscape.
On 19 June 2009, a bird in an eastern territory began calling, followed by its neighbour and then birds in further adjacent territories. The researchers interpreted these sequences as neighbouring calls stimulating territorial responses. Vocal exchanges connected birds occupying separate patches of rock.
IUCN Red List (BirdLife listing) · Least Concern · Global
BirdLife lists Least Concern globally. Erongo observations identify broken rocky terrain with vegetation as repeatedly used habitat, supporting conservation of the combined rock-and-plant environment.