As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Monday 5 October 2015

Elusive Yellow-legged Buttonquail spotted in Mumbai

By Ranjeet Jadhav |Posted 6 hours

The petite bird was spotted on two separate occasions last week; one of the buttonquails was rescued while the other one was found dead

Bird watchers in the city have an equal reason to rejoice and lament the rare sightings of the usually reticent Yellow-legged Buttonquail. Last week, the bird was spotted on two separate occasions in Andheri (West). However, while one of the quails has been rescued, the other was found dead.

Nevertheless, the recent sightings of the bird in Mumbai have taken the forest department and bird experts by surprise. The bird has been sighted only twice or thrice in the past 15 years in and around the city.

On September 29, Prabhu Rajkumar Swami, naturalist and in-charge of the pet section at Bhavans Nature and Adventure Center (BNAC), received a call regarding the sighting of a tiny bird that crows were trying to attack near the Hansraj Morarji School, adjacent to Bhavan’s College in Andheri (West).

Swami immediately asked the caller to safely rescue the bird and bring it to him so that it could be saved. Swami said, “One of the workers safely rescued the bird and brought it to BNAC. When I first saw the bird, I could not recognise which species it was and so I immediately clicked a few pictures of its and forwarded it to bird expert Adesh Shivkar. He confirmed to me that it was a Yellow-legged Buttonquail.”

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