Painted Button-quail are one of the ACT's mystery birds. They are
cryptic. They freeze. Competent observers will find them with effort,
but this requires virtually a targeted effort. (Except for odd birds
that flush).
Are they here all year round? If so, do they move around the region? Do
they move within or between, say, individual reserves, once breeding is
over? Are they regular seasonal migrants? Is their presence in the ACT
more depndent on events elsewhere? How common are they?
Last year we located many sites where PBQs had created platelets and
heard from others who had also located them. In our case, there was a
set of environmental factors that the platelet sites tended to have in
common. In general, these are in woodlands with some rocks, dead
branches on the ground, some bare patches, some shrubs, tussocks, leaf
litter, often on a northerly or north-easterly slope. But PBQs are know
to have fairly wide habitat preferences. While the PBQs are not randomly
distributed within the ACT there are stray ACT records of PBQs that do
not match our 'usual' sites, including a sighting in a higher, wetter
forest, backyards and the shores of Lake Gininderra.
On Black Mountain, prior to Christmas, we located five sites where
Painted Button-quail had created platelets. The platelets are highly
distinctive and can readily be separated from other scratchings and
diggings in the litter. There were literally hundreds of platelets
between the three sites. There were sightings of PBQs in two of the five
sites. We also observed that rain made it possible to identify which
platelets were old and which were fresh.
This morning we searched three of last year's Black Mountain sites for
signs of platelets. Not a shard of a platelet to be found.
We then scouted beyond the perimeters of the sites, covering an area of
(very roughly) about one kilometres by 40 metres. Again, not a platelet.
It seems that the platelets can be used as a means of learning a lot
more about PBQs than we know now.
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