Community & Business
21 January, 2023
Fascinating talk on Button-quail
BUTTON-quail are the subject of a free talk at Malanda this week.
BirdLife Australia Northern Queensland Branch has arranged for a free public talk by Patrick Webster on the Button-quails of Australia which will be held at Malanda Hotel on Thursday from 7.30pm.
There are three native species of quail in Australia, all found in northern Queensland, but our re-gion also has seven species of Button-quail that look very similar to true quails but are more closely related to waders.
For most species, little is known but Mr Webster has studied all species in great detail beginning with the Black-breasted Button-quail of southern Queensland which he studied for his Honours thesis and more recently has worked on his PhD in which he focussed on the extraordinary Buff-breasted Button-quail.
This is the only species of Australian bird for which there is not a single published photograph of a living bird and about which almost nothing is known. Some people suspect it is already extinct while others hope there may be a surviving population.
The free talk at Malanda will cover all Australian species and provide details about their distribution, diet, habitat, vocalisation, conservation status and where to see them.
