| Quail-plover | |
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Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Turnicidae |
| Genus: | Ortyxelos Vieillot, 1825 |
| Species: | O. meiffrenii |
| Binomial name | |
| Ortyxelos meiffrenii (Vieillot, 1819) | |
Thequail-plover,lark buttonquail orlark-plover (Ortyxelos meiffrenii) is a small ground-living bird in the buttonquail familyTurnicidae that is found in theSahel region of Africa and in adisjunct region ofEast Africa. It is the only species placed in the genusOrtyxelos.[2]
The quail-plover is a small, short-tailed cursorial bird which slightly resembles a miniaturecourser 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 primarycoverts and the black with white-tippedremiges to form a distinct diagonal band on the upperwing. Its fluttering flight style is ratherlark-like. The females are slightly darker than the males while the juveniles are paler.[3]
The quail-plover occurs inSahel from southernMauritania and northernSenegal eastwards to northernCameroon and southernChad[3] intoSouth Sudan and southernSudan[1] with separate populations in northernBenin and coastal Ghana,[3] with another inUganda,Kenya andEthiopia.[4]
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. It 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[3] 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.[5]
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.[4]
Genera ofshorebirds and their extinct allies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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