Rain Quail

About the Rain Quail

The rain quail or black-breasted quail (Coturnix coromandelica) is a species of quail found in the Indian Sub-continent and South-east Asia; its range including Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The rain quail was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the quail like birds in the genus Tetrao and coined the binomial name Tetrao coromandelicus. Gmelin based his description on "La Petite caille de Gingi" that had been described in 1782 by the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat in his Voyage aux Indes orientales et a la Chine. The rain quail is now one of six species placed in the genus Coturnix that was introduced in 1764 by the French naturalist François Alexandre Pierre de Garsault. The genus name is the Latin for the common quail. The specific epithet coromandelica is from the type location, the Coromandel Coast of southeast India. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

The rain quail lacks barring on primaries. The male has a black breast-patch and distinctive... Wikipedia →