King quail

King quail
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Galliformes
Family: Phasianidae
Genus: Synoicus
Species:
S. chinensis
Binomial name
Synoicus chinensis
(Linnaeus, 1766)
Synonyms
  • Tetrao chinensis Linnaeus, 1766
  • Coturnix chinensis (Linnaeus, 1766)
  • Excalfactoria chinensis Linnaeus, 1766
Samsonvale, SE Queensland
Captive 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 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.

  1. ^ BirdLife International (2016). "Synoicus chinensis". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2016: e.T22678979A92797212. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22678979A92797212.en. Retrieved 12 November 2021.