Probably the most interesting sighting that we’ve had in our garden was in April 2015, when we started noticing plate-sized bare patches in the leaf litter. Then we saw a small stout bird foraging on the ground under a bush and thought it might be a Brown Quail, but then it came out and revealed itself as a Painted Button-Quail (Turnix varia). It didn’t seem to mind our presence and so we could watch it feeding with the characteristic Button-Quail method that produces ‘platelets’, a set of bare patches on the ground, about the size of dinner-plates. The bird stands on one leg and scratches the leaf litter with the other, slowly rotating the position of the standing leg until the bird has searched a whole circle. It then moves on to another spot and repeats the process, leaving behind an otherwise mysterious trail of bare circles. Rosemary took the opportunity to take some photos of the bird and its platelets, which are attached. And then, after four days, the Button-Quail vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared.
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