I've given this thread a 'bump' as I'm sure there are a good few people who'd like to know, whether in the six years or so since the last comment, there have been any sightings of this enigmatic species in Iberia or in north-west Africa (outside the known range in Morocco).
My own interest has recently been fired after doing a little research (mainly of an historical nature) on the species for my blog on Cadiz birding (far too long to be quoted in full here but if you'd like to read it see –
http://birdingcadizprovince.weebly.com/cadiz-birding-blog-page. My own feelings are that, given the rather surprising reports of the species in Spain at the start of this century and its notorious elusiveness, it would be premature to entirely discount the possibility that a few might yet survive, but that if any are found it will only be for us to witness their final extinction here. On the other hand I rather expect, if anyone's been able to look, for them to be found elsewhere in NW Africa outside the tiny relict population in SW Morocco.
It's also been interesting to discover that, contra the otherwise excellent and seminal article by Gutierrez et al (see History, status and distribution of Andalusian Buttonquail in the WP” by Carlos Gutiérrez Expósito et al Dutch Birding 33: 75-93; available online via
www.researchgate.net), that the species was known to writers in Spain long before 1834 as they suggest. It's even noted and illustrated in,
*'A General Synopsis of Birds' (Vol II Part 2 p790 – see
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/33730435 published in 1783 – four years before it's 'official discovery by Desfontaines. It was apparently described even earlier as 'Three-toed Quail' by Dr George Shaw (one of the greatest naturalists of his day), but I've as yet not found the exact reference. The earliest report of the species I've found thus far is in 1770 (although it wasn't published until much later) when Gilbert White wrote to Thomas Pennant that his brother John (then a chaplain Gibraltar) to say his brother has sent him a “Tetrao coturnico similis, pedibus tridactylis - Smaller than the quail, and called trail, or terraile” (the name clearly being an Anglicised form of the Spanish El Torillo). Given that by this time British military personnel, always keen 'sportsmen', had been stationed on Gibraltar for over 50 years, it's quite likely that there are other (unpublished) records of the 'terralie' mouldering away amongst private papers.
Finally, it's been interesting to discover that the claimed British record of 1844 was supported by a photograph (presumably of the dead bird) which must surely be one of the earliest reports of photography being used to support the claim of a rare bird! (See - The Zoologist'*1849
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/123055#page/303/mode/1up).