Quail-plover
Ortyxelos meiffrenii
A strange long-legged buttonquail that resembles a hybrid between gamebird and shorebird – hence its name. If seen well, the brown-and-cream-scalloped upperparts, the pale-yellow bill and legs, and the off-white eyebrow, belly, and wing edge are distinctive. Most typically seen when disturbed, either running at high speed when it could be mistaken for a lark, or in flight when the bold black-and-white wing pattern and fluttering zig-zag flight render it unmistakable. Scarce and local, with movements poorly understood; found in open grassland and grassy shrubland. Mostly silent, but a low whistle has been described.
识别特征
The quail-plover is a small, short-tailed cursorial bird which looks a little like a miniature courser when on the ground. The upperparts are a sandy-rufous colour and the underparts mainly whitish. They show a distinctive wing pattern in flight when the contrast between the white primary coverts and the black with white-tipped remiges to form a distinct diagonal band on the upperwing. Its fluttering flight style is rather lark-like. The females are slightly darker than the males while the juveniles are paler.
分类信息
- 学名
- Ortyxelos meiffrenii
- 命名信息
- (Vieillot, 1819)
- 目
- Charadriiformes
- 科
- Turnicidae
- 属
- Ortyxelos
分布与栖息地
The quail-plover occurs in Sahel from southern Mauritania and northern Senegal eastwards to northern Cameroon and southern Chad into South Sudan and southern Sudan with separate populations in northern Benin and coastal Ghana, with another in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia.
- 迁徙
- Complete migrants
行为
The quail-plover is usually found singly or in pairs in dry grassland and thorn scrub. It is rather skulking preferring to move stealthily through grass but also running around like a courser in the open. Tends to crouch down and hide when approached and flushes only when the observer is almost on top of it and then flies off with a jerky undulating flight. It breeds during the dry season and moves north ahead of the rains It tends to be more active at night and to call with a soft low whistle like the wind going through a pipe during moonlit nights.
保护状况
The quail-plover has an extremely large range, its population trend is not known, the population is not understood to be undergoing a sufficiently rapid decline to approach the thresholds under the population trend criterion while the population size has not been quantified so the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
- 种群趋势
- unknown
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分布
其他鸟类
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