The Quail is a ground-nesting bird from the pheasant family. It breeds here in the summer but spends winter in Africa! It is the only British game bird that migrates and is more often heard than seen. Quails are also reared as poultry for their eggs and meat.
Quails are streaked brown with a white eyestripe. The male has a white chin with a black throat and the female is generally slightly bigger than the male. As migrating birds, they have long pointed wings compared to other game birds. Their call is three chirps, in quick succession, that sounds like "wet my lips".
They mainly eat insects and seeds on the ground while keeping well hidden in crop fields. They are reluctant to fly and prefer creeping away instead.
Nesting begins in May. The male arrives first and calls to attract a female. Once paired, mum makes a shallow scrape on the ground which she lines with vegetation. She lays 8-13 eggs at one-day intervals and incubates them for 20 days. The eggs hatch one by one and the youngsters can immediately feed themselves. Mum alone looks after them, and they fledge after 19 days but stay in a family group for at least a month. Dad deserts mum early on and may shack up with another female.
Quails are heavily hunted in the Mediterranean, with large numbers caught in nets. Recent declines made them Amber Listed, but numbers are slowly recovering thanks to hunting quotas. In some years, known as 'quail years', the numbers arriving in Britain are much greater than usual, reaching several thousand, but normally numbers are less than a thousand. The oldest known wild Quail lived for 8 years.
Their Latin name is 'coturnix coturnix' where 'coturnix' is the Latin for a Quail. The English name is derived from the French name 'caille'. There are several subspecies of Quail worldwide, like the Japanese Quail.