For 100 years, the evening parrot was the undisputed thriller fowl of Australian ornithology. Till the invention and subsequent examine of a tiny inhabitants in Queensland’s far west in 2013, two specimens discovered by the aspect of distant outback roads in 1990 and 2006, additionally in Queensland, have been the one exhausting proof of its continued existence.
With the parrot now current and accounted for, there stays one Australian fowl that has by no means been photographed: the buff-breasted buttonquail.
Just like the evening parrot, it has gone a full century undetected. The final undisputed file was a specimen shot by the legendary naturalist William McLennan close to Coen in far north Queensland, in February 1922.
It might even be the primary Australian fowl condemned to extinction for the reason that paradise parrot – one more Queensland species, which was final seen alive within the Twenties.
Buttonquail are a small household of ground-dwelling, polyandrous species that resemble however aren’t carefully associated to “true” quail (a part of a a lot bigger group that additionally contains pheasants and chickens). Distributed from sub-Saharan Africa throughout Asia and Australia, buttonquail principally stay in grasslands, fly solely when disturbed and aren’t usually seen.
Regardless of its enigmatic standing, the buff-breasted buttonquail (Turnix olivii) just isn’t an attractive species. It didn’t make the longlist for Guardian Australia’s 2023 fowl of the yr ballot. It’s a cryptic, dumpy, dowdy fowl that, within the exceedingly unlikely occasion you have been ever to see one, would seem as a whirr of wings exploding out of your ft and disappearing helter-skelter into the scrub.
That’s if ever you’re feeling like trudging by way of the baking scorching savannah of Cape York Peninsula.
“The issue with buff-breasted buttonquail is you’ve acquired to be mad to review them, and also you’ve acquired to actually love your buttonquails,” the group chief of the analysis and restoration of endangered species (Rares) workforce on the College of Queensland, James Watson, says.
Enter graduate scholar Patrick Webster. In April 2018, Webster was helping with evening parrot surveys at Pullen Pullen reserve in far west Queensland – any birdwatcher’s dream.
“I used to be with him when he noticed his first evening parrot after which a few hours of later he noticed his first little buttonquail. He was much more excited in regards to the buttonquail,” Watson says.
Webster admits he had bother discovering a supervisor who would tackle his proposal to review the buff-breasted buttonquail for his doctorate till Watson put his hand up.
“I used to be beginning to turn into fairly obsessed with this group of birds and right here was one which was nearly unknown to science,” Webster says. “I noticed that as a spot in our understanding, a spot that I may fill and that was the attract.”
Unreliable memoirs
And so for 4 years – principally in the course of the near-unbearable humidity of the early moist season – Webster and Watson slogged by way of the dry woodlands of Cape York. They concentrated their early efforts between Mareeba and Mount Molloy, the place for many years hardcore birders had claimed to have encountered the species, with out conclusive proof.
Full disclaimer: I used to be one in all them. In late January 2007 I walked the hills south of Mount Molloy for 3 days, and on three events flushed what I considered buff-breasted buttonquail. However with out a {photograph}, my fading reminiscences are an unreliable witness to observations lasting no various seconds.
Many instances early of their fieldwork, Webster and Watson thought they’d discovered the species. Massive buttonquail becoming accepted area descriptions of the buff-breasted could be startled from underneath their ft. However every time they have been in a position to relocate the birds, hiding or scuttling by way of the grass, they might be dissatisfied.
Invariably, the birds turned out to be the carefully associated painted buttonquail (Turnix varius), a way more frequent and broadly distributed species.
“A collection of pink flags began to emerge,” Webster says. “It took 12 to 18 months to grasp what was occurring.”
They modified course. Webster was briefly despatched to review a 3rd species, chestnut-backed buttonquail, which replaces the buff-breasted buttonquail within the Prime Finish and Kimberley. It too is little-known, however Webster had no bother monitoring it down, even discovering the species in Queensland for the primary time.
Webster’s means to seek out buttonquail was not in query. An uncomfortable conclusion of mistaken id was being drawn.
“All people was going to the identical website to search for the fowl after which it will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he says.
Which led to an much more troubling conclusion: that the buff-breasted buttonquail was in a lot deeper bother than already believed.
Webster, Watson and the Rares workforce nominated the fowl to be moved from endangered to critically endangered standing underneath state and federal laws. The Queensland authorities accepted the advice in late 2022. The buff-breasted buttonquail continues to be listed as endangered underneath the federal Environmental Safety and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Searching for buttonquail in all of the unsuitable locations
Richard Schodde, an eminent Australian botanist and ornithologist agrees with Webster that human psychology has performed a job in making a fable across the species.
“Folks exit in that nation, flush a giant buttonquail underneath their ft, and suppose the one factor it may be is a buff-breasted buttonquail. They usually all wish to say they’ve seen one,” he says.
Schodde believes buff-breasted buttonquail have been by no means current on the northern Atherton Tablelands. There’s, he says, a biogeographical divide from Cooktown northwards, with its personal grasses and eucalypts – principally Darwin stringybark – which the buff-breasted buttonquail prefers.
In idea, Schodde says, which means buff-breasted and painted buttonquail mustn’t exist alongside one another.
“They’ve acquired to maintain looking up round that nation the place McLennan first discovered it, and in floristic habitat prefer it elsewhere on the peninsula – that’s the best way to do that job.”
However not all scientists share Schodde’s view. “We all know so little in regards to the buff-breasted buttonquail that it’s very exhausting to be definitive about habitat preferences,” says Stephen Garnett, co-author of The Motion Plan for Australian Birds. He notes that pastoralism and altered hearth regimes have dramatically modified the panorama since McLennan’s observations.
Regardless, Schodde says the sooner perception {that a} inhabitants of buff-breasted buttonquail appeared safe on the northern Atherton Tablelands had created complacency across the true standing of the species.
Regardless of the passage of a century and his failure to this point to seek out the fowl, Webster stays assured the buff-breasted buttonquail nonetheless exists.
“Primarily, the entire survey effort for this species has been performed in areas the place they don’t happen,” Webster says. “And never simply myself, clearly – everyone.”
One factor is for certain. If the buff-breasted buttonquail continues to be on the market, it’s extraordinarily uncommon.
This article by Andrew Stafford was first printed by The Guardian on 28 December 2023. Lead Picture: An illustration of the buff-breasted buttonquail by John Keulemans, printed in The Birds of Australia (1911). {Photograph}: John Gerrard Keulemans.
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