King quail

The king quail (Synoicus chinensis), also known as the blue-breasted quail, Asian blue quail, Chinese painted quail, or Chung-Chi, is a cute species of Old World quail in the family Phasianidae. This species is the smallest "true quail", ranging in the wild from southern China, South and Southeast Asia to Oceania, south to southeastern Australia, with 9 different subspecies. A failed attempt was made to introduce this species to New Zealand by the Otago Acclimatisation Society in the late 1890s. It is quite common in aviculture worldwide, where it is sometimes misleadingly known as the "button quail", which is the name of an only very distantly related family of birds, the buttonquails.

Male king quail occur in many colors, including blue, brown, silver, maroon, dark brown, and almost black. They have orange feet that are hard and able to withstand a continuous life on the ground like many other game birds. Females are similar to the males, but do not occur in shades of blue. They can live up to 13 years in captivity but typically only 3–6 years. In the wild, they may live only 1.5 years. The eggs of king quail are a light, creamy-brown colour and slightly pointed at the "top", roughly ovular in shape. Male quail give a descending whistle and a raspy "snoring" call.

Six subspecies are recognized:

The species has had a complex taxonomic history, being classified into the genus Coturnix, then Synoicus, then Excalfactoria. Phylogenetic evidence supports it belonging in an expanded Synoicus that, alongside the blue quail (S. adansonii) also includes the Snow Mountain quail (S. monorthonyx) and brown quail (S. ypsilophorus).

The subspecies S. c. victoriae was formerly named C. s. australis (Gould, 1865), but the reclassification of the species into Synoicus caused this designation to be preoccupied by the Australian subspecies of the brown quail (S. y. australis), leading to the epithet being changed to victoriae (Mathews, 1912).

The males fight for the right to mate with the females. The winner then breeds every female. Females can then develop and lay an egg within one to two days of being bred. They either build a nest first or lay eggs on the ground. Females usually only go broody when they have collected an ideal clutch size. Clutch size varies from five to 13 eggs. Before incubation starts, all the eggs composing the clutch will have been laid. In captivity, the ideal number of eggs in a clutch is six to eight. The chicks hatch after about 16 days.

King quail are not listed as threatened on the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

This species is listed as threatened on the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (1988). Under this Act, an Action Statement for the recovery and future management of this species has not been prepared.