Yellow-legged Buttonquail

The yellow-legged buttonquail is a small buttonquail, 15–18 cm long. The buttonquails resemble true quails but are unrelated, and are peculiar in that the females are larger and more colourful than the males and are polyandrous. The tail is short and the wings have rounded ends. The adult male has a black crown with a buff margin, sometimes with a buff central streak, and the front and sides of the head are buff, each feather with a black tip (Wikipedia, general species account).

Females offer food to males during courtship and leave incubation to the male once the eggs are laid. In non-breeding plumage the female's rufous collar becomes mixed with grey and the plumage greyer. In most of its range it is resident, but it migrates by night to the drier parts of India in the wet season, and also to Korea and south-eastern Russia, where it breeds. One subspecies is found in Pakistan, India, Nepal and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, with a Restricted range of about 15,500 km² and insufficient data on trends (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).