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Red-backed Button-quails are very small ground-dwelling birds. Their plumage is highly cryptic and dimorphic, i.e. males and females are different. Male Red-backed Buttonquails have a dark-grey back and rump, streaked with lighter grey and brown. Wing panels and flanks are creamy, with the inner wing coverts and the shoulders having dark spots in the centre of the creamy feathers. This gives the birds an appearance that looks all creamy with dark spots on the sides when the wings are folded. The outer wings and the flight feathers are grey, the colour of which morphs with that of the rump when the wings are folded, while the underwings and the belly are light-grey. The head of males is vermiculated yellowish-creamy and grey. Females are bigger and heavier than males. In addition, the face and throat is suffused with rufous and they have a prominent rufous semi-collar around the nape of the neck. Otherwise they are similar to males. Both sexes have a yellowish bill with a dark tip. The irises are light-grey, while the legs are yellow. Juveniles have an all-cryptic vermiculated plumage dominated by dark-grey on the back and grey with creamy white at the front. Immature males large have the colouring of adult males but with a subdued or totally absent rufous collar.

Quail vs. Button-quail

Although the two genera of the true quails, Coturnix, and the button-quails, Turnix, are outwardly very similar, and therefore often listed together, there are significant differences between them (which is the reason why they are in different family groups here).

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Red-backed Button-quail is available HERE .

Red-backed Button-quails are a species of south-eastern Asia, Oceania and northern and eastern Australia, with in total 14 extant races.

In South-east Asian and Oceania their range extends from East Timor via Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines to the Solomon Islands.

In Australia, Red-backed Button-quails are only found in coastal and near-coastal areas in the tropical North of the continent, from Broome, WA, via the Kimberley, WA, and the Top End of the NT to Cape York peninsula in northern QLD, and all the way down the East coast of QLD, and further southward as far as the NSW Central Coast. There are few sighting reports away from the coastal margin, in the Great Dividing Range, while in the tropical North sightings away from the coastline are more common.

Red-backed Button-quails are found mostly in rough, tussocky grassland, but also woodland and cropping fields.

M. Eaton reports finding a Red-backed Button-quail at Moggill, QLD, in March 2021. All sighting and audio information presented on this page has been kindly contributed by M. Eaton.