3/21/2023 0 Comments Button quailThis male was found 150km north of their currently recognised distribution. One of the many painted button-quail found over the course of the project. These differ by having a bright red eye and a grey breast. There were a few times in far north Queensland’s wet-season – supposedly the best time of year to see buff-breasted button-quail – when I saw birds fitting its widely accepted description: they were large, with sandy rufous (reddish brown) back and rumps, and contrasting dark primary feathers.īut whenever I thought I saw one on the ground, it turned out to be a painted button-quail. Our research team aimed to find a population, study its ecology, determine what threatening processes had led to its rarity, and learn how it could be conserved. What happened?įor my doctoral project on the species, I joined the RARES research group at the University of Queensland in 2018. Regent honeyeaters were once kings of flowering gums. No photos, no specimens, nor any other verifiable evidence has been produced. Unfortunately, none of these reports or research endeavours produced anything more than brief sightings of the bird, typically only split-second views as it flew off from under their feet. Some 60 years later in 1985, it was “rediscovered” just west of Cairns, and this launched dozens of new sightings by birdwatchers and several research projects over the next few decades. McLennan’s diary from that wet season of 1921-1922 has remained the only detailed descriptions of the buff-breasted button-quail’s ecology. Patrick Webster Searching for a lost species The site where McLennan collected the last buff-breasted button-quail in 1922. The tall Messmate savanna ( Eucalyptus tetrodonta) just north of Coen in Cape York Peninsula. Still, my ongoing research has brought us a step closer to solving this mystery and I remain hopeful the bird is still in existence. All I’ve been able to find is its more common cousin: the painted button-quail. I’ve spent four years searching for the buff-breasted button-quail, walking hundreds of kilometres and spending months scouring practically every locality where the species had ever been reported. A century later, we have still yet to confirm any sightings of this mysterious, native bird. This skin was the last of the species ever collected. Later that evening he would have skinned and stuffed the bird, turning it into a museum specimen, before describing the encounter in his diary. The bird was a buff-breasted button-quail, and the collector was Australian field naturalist William Rae McLennan. A loud shotgun blast, and the bird dropped to the ground. They had just heard their quarry calling among the tall grass – a low “oomm, oomm, oomm” – before it burst into view with a flurry of wingbeats. Retrieved 24 January 2022.In humid savanna on Cape York Peninsula, February 5, 1922, a man was on the hunt with a local Indigenous guide. sylvatica (Desf.) in the Mediterranean region. Extinction of the Andalusian Hemipode Turnix s. MaghrebOrnitho, Published on 9 November 2018. Andalusian Buttonquail legally declared extinct in Spain. History, status and distribution of Andalusian Buttonquail in the WP.
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