Critically Endangered
Himalayan quail
Ophrysia superciliosa
The Himalayan quail or mountain quail, is a medium-sized quail belonging to the pheasant family.
Appearance
The red bill and legs of this small dark quail and white spots before and after the eye make it distinctive. The male is dark grey with bleak streaks and a white forehead and supercilium. The female is brownish with dark streaks and greyish brow.
The species was described in 1846 by J.
Range and habitat
The Himalayan quail or mountain quail, is a medium-sized quail belonging to the pheasant family.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
The fluffy, soft plumage suggests it was adapted for low temperatures. It has been suggested that the birds migrated north and uphill in the summer months to the higher mountains, but the shape and size of its wings do not suggest a bird capable of flying long distances.
In crisis
It was last reported in 1876 and is feared extinct. This species was known from only two locations (and 12 specimens) in the western Himalayas in Uttarakhand, north-west India.
Himalayan quail is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Himalayan quail, Wikidata item Q852146. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
