When their colleague raised questions about ‘records’ of the Buff-breasted Button-quail, Nicholas Leseberg and James Watson took a long, hard look at their own 1993 sightings. Now, they look at the role of the birding community in conservation science, and explore what birders can do better for bird conservation in the midst of the big […]
Setting the Record Straight Read More »
On the centenary of the last irrefutable sighting of the elusive Buff-breasted Button-quail, Patrick Webster concludes a four-year search for the bird with a question: could the sightings from the last four decades be a case of mistaken identity? If you were asked ten years ago ‘what is Australia’s rarest bird?’, perhaps the Night Parrot
In humid savanna on Cape York Peninsula, February 5, 1922, a man was on the hunt with a local Indigenous guide. They had just heard their quarry calling among the tall grass – a low “oomm, oomm, oomm” – before it burst into view with a flurry of wingbeats. A loud shotgun blast, and the