29 November 2011

With recent sightings again of Buff-breasted Buttonquail from the Lake Mitchell areas of the Atherton Tablelands, we decided to resurrect this old article. Remember of course, BBBQs are a threatened species, so try to tread lightly. This is after all, the best site for seeing these birds in Australia and it would be a shame to subject them to unnecessary disturbance.

Despite myriad attempts by birders to see Buff-breasted Buttonquails, no-one has ever managed to get even a poor-quality photo. This is surely one of Australasia’s most mysterious and enigmatic species.

Australian Buttonquails from left to right: Red-backed Buttonquail, Little Buttonquail, Red-chested Buttonquail, Chestnut-backed Buttonquail, Black-breasted Buttonquail, Painted Buttonquail and Buff-breasted Buttonquail.

It was in January 2005 I first visited the Atherton Tablelands with my friend Nathan Waugh. The weather was hot and the kangaroo grass had only just begun to grow on the rocky hills around Mount Molloy. With just a couple of days left in an already hectic week-long birding itinerary, we arrived for a night at Kingfisher Park, where we bumped into Richard Baxter and a posse of birders, claiming to have just seen Buff-breasted Buttonquail.

For their efforts – five long days walking in the tropical savanna heat – some had won flight views of what are described as the “largest and rarest” of all the world’s buttonquails. This is far more than most birders ever get to see.

With just 48 hours before our return flight to Melbourne, we were in a quandry. Do we potentially waste two whole days laboriously searching savanna grassland and find nothing? Or do we head home, wondering if we may have missed the best opportunity of our lives, to join a very small class of birders who can claim to have seen Buff-breasted Buttonquail?

It was not a difficult choice really … we headed off pre-dawn the next day armed with copious amounts of water and ventured into the bush. Hour after hour, we plodded on. Apart from the odd flock of Black-throated Finches, the environment was largely devoid of birds. By midday, it felt like we were the only things still moving, and our heads were filled with the throbbing sound of cicadas. The day passed…not even a whiff of Buff-breasted Buttonquail.

The following morning, we departed a second time for dawn south of Mount Molloy. I’d lent Nathan a pair of Leicas but today he’d forgotten to bring them…an old pair of compacts would have to do. That was to prove his biggest mistake but possibly just the luck we needed – like the time you leave your camera behind and something amazing happens. It was almost the end of the second day and hours before our plane left Cairns. We’d about given up hope when for some reason, I checked a small patch of grass not far from a rocky outcrop near the road. Suddenly a Buttonquail erupted with a “whirr” of wings, gliding up the slope and alighting just behind some rocks.

Field notes from the time of the encounter. For birds this rare, sketches and notes at the time can be essential help for field identification.

“Buff-breasted Buttonquail” I shouted to Nathan, who was stood only metres away and had seen the whole thing. We ran up the slope to where the bird landed, turned and looked back in the direction from whence we came. There, running across the open ground was another (or possibly the same) Buff-breasted Buttonquail in plain view. In characteristic buttonquail style, it ran, paused, took stock of its surrounds then ran again until once more, it vanished into the undergrowth.

When I was a kid looking at bird books for the first time, Cassowaries, Riflebirds and Golden Bowerbirds felt like creatures of legend. There are some birds that it’s hard to imagine really exist until you see one. Buff-breasted Buttonquail is one of those birds. Just before you sight one, you have no expectation you ever will. Then they disappear like an apparition and you can’t quite believe your eyes.

I returned a month later with an Australian Geographic photographer and spent five days in the same location but found no birds. By this time, the kangaroo grass was growing fast and the first fresh drops of monsoonal rain appeared. On the last day, we got a call from Lloyd Nielsen. He’d heard a bird calling in a patch of bush just near the Mount Molloy town sign. Sure enough, we heard the almost inaudible low, ebbing “whoop-whoop-whoop” call of a Buff-breasted Buttonquail. The bird was in a patch of grass no bigger than an urban back yard. Somehow, inexplicably but not unexpectedly, it again slipped away like a ghost.