The Snow Mountain quail (''Synoicus monorthonyx''), is a roughly 28-cm-long (11 in), dark brown

quail Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized birds generally placed in the order Galliformes. The collective noun for a group of quail is a flock, covey, or bevy. Old World quail are placed in the family Phasianidae, and New ...

of alpine

grassland A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominance (ecology), dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes such as clover, and other Herbaceo ...

s. It was formerly considered the only member of the

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

''Anurophasis'', but phylogenetic analysis places it as the

sister species In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

to the

brown quail The brown quail (''Synoicus ypsilophorus''), also known as the swamp quail, silver quail and Tasmanian quail, is an Australasian true quail of the family Phasianidae. It is a small, ground-dwelling bird and is native to mainland Australia, Tasman ...

(''S. ypsilophorus'') in the genus ''

Synoicus ''Synoicus'' is a genus of 4 species of Old World quail. The species in the genus are distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, tropical Asia, and Australasia. Two of the four species in the genus were originally classified in ''Excalfactoria'' ...

''. It has heavily marked brown

plumage Plumage () is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes. Within species, there can b ...

, a pale yellow

bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Pl ...

, yellow legs and a brown iris. The underparts of the female are whitish and more distinctly barred black than in the male. The Snow Mountain quail is confined to

Western New Guinea Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, and Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly Dutch and granted to Indonesia in 1962. Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region ...

's highest elevations, the

Snow Snow consists of individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water througho ...

and

Star Mountains The Star Mountains ( Dutch ( colonial)'': Sterrengebergte''; Indonesian'': Pegunungan Bintang'') are a mountain range in eastern end of Highland Papua, Indonesia and the western Papua New Guinea, stretching from the eastern end of Indonesia t ...

. This little-known bird is protected only by the remoteness of its habitat, a mostly inaccessible area at altitudes of . The female usually lays up to three, pale brown, dark-spotted eggs in a hollow nest under the edge of a grass tussock. The diet consists mainly of seeds, flowers, leaves, and other vegetable matter. Due to its limited range, parts of which are getting increasingly accessible, the Snow Mountain quail is evaluated as "

near threatened A near-threatened species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized as "Near Threatened" (NT) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as that may be vulnerable to Endangered species, endangerment in the ne ...

" on the

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological spe ...

References

External links

BirdLife Species Factsheet

Red Data Book
{{Taxonbar, from=Q283577 Quails Synoicus Birds of Western New Guinea Endemic fauna of New Guinea Endemic fauna of Indonesia Endemic birds of Indonesia Birds described in 1910 Taxa named by Eduard Daniël van Oort Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN