The former range of Common Buttonquail Turnix s. sylvaticus supports its apparent conflation with Common Quail Coturnix coturnix in the Egyptian phonogram G-43

Ancient Egyptians made much use of birds in their hieroglyphic characters. One such character or phonogram, G-43 of Gardiner's Egyptian grammar, has the appearance of a Common Quail Coturnix coturnix chick and represents the phoneme ‘U’ or ‘W’ (hence we refer to it here as the ‘U-bird’). However, the Common Quail produces no sound approximating to ‘U’. We speculate that the sound value of the glyph may derive from the Common Buttonquail Turnix sylvaticus, which closely resembles a small Common Quail and whose huuu huuu huuu call clearly reflects the phoneme ‘U’. Even so, while migrant Common Quails were superabundant in ancient Egypt and remain heavily exploited for food today, the nominate subspecies of Common Buttonquail, although recorded in the western and central Mediterranean basin, has been thought absent from Egypt in both the distant and recent past. Nevertheless, an overlooked record from east of the Nile Delta in 1855 implies that within the past 200 years the species ranged across all North Africa. Moreover, Pliny the Elder’s convincing record from Arles (France) 2,000 years ago equally implies a wider former range, probably related to wetter conditions throughout the Mediterranean basin in the past five millennia. Its year-round presence and extended breeding (hence calling) period could have made the species as familiar to ancient Egyptians as the seasonally abundant Common Quail, and we hypothesise that the two species are conflated in G-43. That Turnix sylvaticus sylvaticus may have provided a foundational element of the ancient Egyptians’ system of communication adds to the case for preserving its last, near-extinct population, in a tiny coastal strip of central-western Morocco.