The dire state of the buff-breasted button-quail: Where to from here?

Hidetoshi (Mikey) Kudo – Cairns Area Coordinator

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Cairns Bird Talk

The dire state of the buff-breasted button-quail: Where to from here?

Presented by Patrick Webster

The recordings below are of a BirdLife Northern Queensland Bird Talk hosted on 27 April 2022 at Cominos House, Edge Hill.

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Australia supports the greatest diversity and endemism of button-quail of any country in the world. Button-quail are notoriously shy and cryptic, and as a result very little is known of their ecology. The least known is the Buff-breasted Button-quail.

This species is thought to be an inhabitant of north Queensland, though the finer details of its ecology remain largely a mystery. For the past four years the PhD candidate Patrick Webster from the RARES lab, University of Queensland, has been studying the Buff-breasted Button-quail. What has been uncovered during this project is extremely concerning. 

What was once considered a rare migrant or vagrant to the Wet Tropics of north Queensland may actually be in a far worse state than was previously thought. The current lack of verified records across its entire range is alarming.

In this talk, Patrick discussed the history and current status of the Buff-breasted Button-quail as well as his complementary work on other tropical savanna species; Painted and Chestnut-backed Button-quail. He concluded with an insight into his work the policy and conservation ramifications of this work and allow plenty of time for questions and discussion.

Part 1

Part 2