A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time in 2009, before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.
Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester's buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.
Scientists had suspected the species—listed as "data deficient" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's 2008 Red List—was extinct.
A TV crew documented the live bird in the market (above) before it was sold in January, according to the Agence France-Press news agency.Michael Lu, president of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, told AFP the bird's demise should inspire a "local consciousness" about the region's threatened wildlife.
"What if this was the last of its species?" Lu said.
However, the buttonquail is from a "notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds," according to the nonprofit Birdlife International, so the species may survive undetected in other regions.
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3 comments:
Here's a story for you, Wade.
When I was working on a show in Peru, often when we were on the outskirts of the Amazon, jungle people would come with monkeys to try to sell to the circus people (I bought two capuchins, which I released again). Anyway we were in a small town - Pucalpa, right on the edge of the jungle. An Indian woman showed up with an odd looking bird. She had it's legs tied and was carrying it like they carry chickens over there, slung over her shoulder.
It was in bad shape and couldn't stand. I tried to give it drops of water, but it died. I have tried to find a picture of the bird everywhere I could, but have never seen anything like it. The best I could describe it was like a small version of Sesame Street's Big Bird, with long legs, except it was an iridescant black and the fluffy feathers around it's head were dark green. It was about 18" tall.
Then, if you can believe it, in the same town, a boy showed me another bird. It was as smaller than a finch, except it had the head of a tiny hawk, with hooked beak and hawk's eyes. I'm sure it wasn't a baby, because it's feathers were fully developed and it was quite aggresive - took a little chunk of skin between my fingers. Since we only had one more town to go before coming back home to the States, I wanted to risk smuggling it back. I didn't, but once again, I have never found a picture of a bird like that.
Pretty odd huh?
Ian
Ian,
Great story. Possibly some of our "hardcore Ornithologists" can offer some insight or suggestion's as to what the birds were. But understand this, if it is found that the bird you were giving drops of water too, was the last of it's kind, I will be all over you and the circus. LOL
Wade
You have to understand, healing rare animals was still in it's infancy at the time. If I had know 'Namaste' back then, that rare Big Bird might still be with us. Ever try finding prayer beads in the rain forest? Can't be done!
Ian
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