Common Buttonquail rediscovered in Algeria

03/12/2019

Common Buttonquail has been observed again in Algeria after an absence of more than 30 years.

The species, which is more commonly referred to by European birders using its colloquial name of Andalusian Hemipode, was widely believed to be extirpated in Algeria and thus the findings are a major boost for the future conservation of this rare and endangered Western Palearctic species.

Two birds, one of which was unfortunately shot, were observed by hunters near the city of Aïn Beïda, in the country's north-east, on 30 November. The hunters were targeting Common Quail, legal quarry in Algeria, and shot one of the birds by mistake, having not realised it was something different at the time – the shooter involved is said to be regretful, having not realised the great rarity of the species.

The significance of this discovery cannot be underestimated. Not only is it the first sighting anywhere in Algeria for nearly four decades, but this is the first ever observation at an inland locality – all previous occurrences were documented along the country's Mediterranean coast.

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First European bird extinction for 170 years

14/11/2018

After nearly 40 years without a confirmed sighting, Common Buttonquail has become the first bird to be declared extinct in Europe since Great Auk.

Better known by European birders as Andalusian Hemipode, the species has been officially classified as Extinct by the Ecological Transition of the Spanish Government, with extensive searches in southern Spain during the last two decades failing to unearth any remnant populations of this elusive species. The last confirmed Spanish record was in 1981 near Doñana National Park and while reliable observations – often of singing birds – were made into the 2000s, none was fully accepted.

Unlike Great Auk, Common Buttonquail is not globally extinct, and is in fact widely distributed in Africa and Asia. It maintains a flimsy foothold in the Western Palearctic, with a small and declining population of the nominate subspecies sylvaticus found in traditional farmland in parts of coastal Morocco. This population was undiscovered for decades, and only came to public light in 2011 following a paper published in Dutch Birding. In Europe however, Spain represented the last vestige for Common Buttonquail, with the only other populations in Sicily and Portugal likely becoming extinct in the 1920s and 1970s respectively.

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