Buttonquail

Buttonquail or hemipodes are members of a small family of ground birds, Turnicidae, in the order Charadriiformes. Despite their name and resemblance, they bear absolutely no taxonomic relationship to Old World quail of the tribe Coturnicini under the order Galliformes, especially smaller species like the king quail (erroneously called "button quail").

There are 18 species in two genera, with most species placed in the genus Turnix and a single species in the genus Ortyxelos. They inhabit warm, tropical grasslands of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and New Guinea.

Buttonquails are small running birds that avoid flying. Unusually among bird species, the female is the more richly colored of the sexes. While the quail-plover is thought to be monogamous, Turnix buttonquails are sequentially polyandrous; both sexes cooperate in building a nest in the earth, but normally only the male incubates the eggs and tends the young, while the female may go on to mate with other males.