Chinese Painted (Button) Quail

(Coturnix chinensis)

by Gordon Howard

September 2010

I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when, whilst washing up the breakfast pots, I briefly caught a glimpse of something white crossing the top end of the garden. I know what I thought I had seen, a small quail like bird, which of course I immediately dismissed as an hallucination.

The glimpse continued to nag at me. I knew it wasn't the white dove which visits fairly regularly, it just didn't move like a dove. I wondered about the black and white cat which regularly patrols our garden, but that just didn't fit "the jizz"

I walked up the garden, but finding no trace of anything, I told Rita (my wife) to keep an eye open, and reluctantly carried on with the washing up. To my surprise and delight, the bird re-appeared, and with Rita as a witness, I knew I wasn't seeing things. Grabbing my camera (which of course was upstairs, and had on the wrong lens), I just managed to get a shot of the rear end, as it ducked again into the shrubbery. Again, no further sign of where it had disappeared to, so I began to assume that that was that.

Some 30 to 40 minutes later, I heard Rita shout upstairs "Gordon - quick, look it's on the patio!" Where was I, yes, in the bathroom cleaning my teeth. Throwing down the toothbrush, I grabbed my camera, and foaming at the mouth, ran down stairs to grab some of photo's below.

The bird has now taken up residence in some fairly dense shrubbery, showing itself only to come out for a feed on the seed I scattered on the patio. It will not let me get too near, and actually flew over my head when I tried in vain to corner it, so we are currently in a "stand off" while I figure out how to catch it.

After a little research I have now identified the bird. It is in fact a Quail (so I wasn't hallucinating), not Coturnix coturnix (our native species), but is a Coturnix chinensis - Chinese Painted or Button Quail - bred white. Clearly it is an escapee