A quail of forest floors in Mexico and northern Central America, with gray-brown, white-streaked plumage that runs rather than taking flight when alarmed.
It has a dark-brown crown, tawny-orange face, and a black stripe behind the eye. The upperparts are gray-brown with white streaks; females have a gray face and paler brown breast.
In mountain forests of eastern Mexico, male and female Singing Quail forage on wooded slopes. They use humid mountain forest as well as pine–oak woodland, searching for food near the ground.
On 3 April 2016, an automatic camera at La Selva in Huayacocotla, Veracruz, captured six photographs of a male and a female foraging on a forested slope. Presented in a 2019 paper, the sequence documented two birds using this small patch of mountain forest.
The same paper reported groups of five seen in Hidalgo in June 2008 and camera records from a wooded slope beside a stream in May 2016. Groups walking through the forest and males and females foraging together were recorded beneath the trees, documenting local places used for feeding and movement.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Research in the Sierra Madre Oriental documented Singing Quail in remaining mountain forest. The 2019 paper called for further study of how land-use change and habitat destruction affect the quails. Conserving forest and combining visual observations with camera records are relevant to following local populations.