Tetrao coturnix, LINNÆUS; La Caille, BUFFON; Die Wachtel,
BECHSTEIN.
This species is the most common of wild poultry kept in the house. It is
rather more than seven inches in length. The beak is short and
horn-coloured, dusky in summer, and ash grey in winter, like the
partridge's and common fowl's; the iris is olive brown; the feet pale
bluish red; on the upper part of the body are dusky and rust-red spots,
with some small white streaks; the throat is dusky, surrounded with two
chestnut brown bands; the front of the neck and the breast are pale rust
red, with some longitudinal dark streaks; the belly is dusky white; the
thighs are reddish grey; the quill-feathers are dark grey, crossed by
many rust red lines; the tail is short, dark brown, with pale rust red
streaks across it.
The female differs sensibly; her throat is white, and her breast, paler
than that of the male, is spotted with black like the thrush's.
HABITATION.--When wild the quail is found throughout the old world.
Unlike the other species of poultry, it is a bird of passage,
arriving in Europe in May, and departing the end of September. It
keeps continually in corn fields, preferring those of wheat.
In the house, if allowed to range, its gentleness, neatness, and
peculiar motions, are seen to advantage; but it is often kept in a
cage of the following make:--A small box two feet long, one foot deep,
and four high, of any shape which is preferred; in this are left two
or three openings, one for drinking at, the other to give light;
besides this all is dark; the bottom is a drawer, which should be
covered with sand, and have a seed drawer at one end; the top is of
green cloth, for as the quail often springs up it would hurt itself
were it of wood. This case should be suspended during the summer
outside the window, for the quail sings much more when confined in
this manner than if allowed to range the room, where there are many
things to call off its attention from its song[123].
When a male without the female is allowed to run about the room, it
is always necessary to shut it up in June (the pairing season), or
else its ardent feelings tempt it to attack all the other birds,
particularly those with a dark plumage, somewhat resembling its own.
Larks, for example, it will follow, and pluck out their feathers till
they are nearly bare.
FOOD.--In a wild state the quail feeds on wheat and other corn,
rape-seed, millet, hemp-seed, and the like. It also eats green
vegetables, as well as insects, and particularly ants' eggs.
In the house it is fed on the same food, adding bread, barley meal
mixed with milk, the universal paste, and occasionally salad or
cabbage chopped up small, and, that it may want nothing to keep it in
health, plenty of river sand for it to roll in and to peck up grains,
which assist its digestion; but this sand must be damp, for if dry it
will not touch it. It drinks a great deal, and the water, contrary to
the opinion of some persons, should be clear, never turbid. It moults
twice in the year, once in autumn, and again in spring; it then
requires river sand, and greater attention than at other times.
BREEDING.--The quail breeds very late, never before July. Its nest, if
it can be called so, is a hole scratched in the earth, in which it
lays from ten to fourteen bluish-white eggs, with large brown spots.
These are hatched after three weeks' incubation. The young ones, all
hairy, follow the mother the moment they leave the shell. Their
feathers grow quickly, for in the autumn they are able to depart with
her to the southern countries. The males are so ardent, that if one
is placed in a room with a female, he will pursue her immediately
with extraordinary eagerness, tearing off her feathers if she resists
in the least; he is less violent if he has been in the same room with
her during the year. The female, in this case, lays a great many
eggs, but rarely sits on them; yet if young ones are brought her from
the fields, she eagerly receives them under her wings, and becomes a
very affectionate mother to them. The young must be fed on eggs
boiled hard and cut small, but the best way is to take the mother
with the covey, which may be done with a net. She watches over them
attentively, and they are more easily reared. During the first year
one would think that all in the covey were females, the males
resemble them so much, particularly before the brown shows itself on
the throat.
MODE OF TAKING.--There are several different methods of taking quails,
but I shall only mention the commonest and easiest. The male birds
are generally caught in a net, called a quail-net, by means of a call
which imitates the cry of the female in the breeding season; it is
the way adopted by bird-catchers in the spring, when they wish to
take a male that sings in a superior manner, that is, which repeats a
dozen times following the syllables "_pieveroie_." If the male has
not yet met with a mate, and if he has not been rendered suspicious
by some unskilful bird-catcher, he will run eagerly into the snare.
The most important thing is to have a good call; they may be had
cheap of turners at Nuremberg, who make them of leather, with a pipe
turned from the bone of a cat or hare, or the leg of a stork; but
they may easily be made by any body. The first thing necessary is a
piece of calf-skin, one foot in length, and four inches in breadth,
the sides must be sewed together within two inches of the end, and
the bottom filled with a piece of wood an inch and a half in length,
and rings composed of thick leather, the diameter of the interior
opening not exceeding an inch and a half, are pushed into the sewed
cylinder, and kept about a quarter of an inch apart; the whole may
afterwards be pressed close together, making the rings touch each
other; then a tube made of the bone of a goose or hare, and filled at
the end like a common whistle, is fastened to the part of the
cylinder left unsewed; the interior is then stopped with wax near the
notch on the side of the leather, and a hole pierced through it with
a knitting-needle; the upper part of the tube must also be stopped
with wax, and lastly, the lower part, which is thus become a kind of
whistle, is very firmly tied to the unsewn part of the cylinder. When
the call is to be used, the lower end must be held firmly in one
hand, and the leather cylinder worked up and down with the other,
making the rings approach and separate, which produces the notes of
the female, "_peuk, peuk, pupu_."
As soon as the male quail is heard that you wish to procure, you must
advance softly to within fifty paces of his station, and place the
tray amongst the wheat in such a position as will suffer it to fall
level with the ground, to prevent the bird's passing under and
escaping. Then retire a few steps back, when the quail will soon
utter its song, to which reply with two or three notes, that when the
quail is silent he may only hear one or two, from the call exactly
resembling the cry of the female. If this is not done with care, the
bird will suspect treachery, and will either retire or remain silent,
and never after fall into such a snare; but if skilfully done, it is
surprising to see how the bird proceeds directly to the call: if by
chance he miss the trap, he will go so near as to be within reach of
the hand; in this case it is best to retire softly to the other side
of the trap and repeat the call, which will again attract it. There
are some quails that know how to avoid the net, particularly if
placed in too open and exposed a place. In this case it is safest to
turn it in a corner at both ends, and thus when it tries to turn it
becomes entangled.
It is proper to notice, that in damp weather, or when it rains, the
quail does not run, but flies immediately towards the call. It does
this also in dewy mornings and evenings; dry days should therefore be
chosen for this chase. In the pairing season, two, three, or even
four quails may be taken at the same place.
If no male is heard in the field, the call of the female must be well
imitated on a larger and more powerful bird-call, and, if any males
are within hearing, they will not fail to answer; the person must
then advance quickly, placing the net so as to stop their road, and
repeat the call.
When a female is to be caught, it is best to employ a common net,
such as is used to take quails in autumn; but this chase should be
deferred till towards the end of harvest, when most of the corn is
cut, and only a few pieces left standing, which serve to harbour
numbers of these birds. Several nets are used at once, as many as six
or eight; some of them are placed across the field of corn, and the
others parallel to them at the extremity of the same field: this
being done, the party go to the opposite side and begin to drive the
quails into the nets in the middle of the field by means of a
packthread stretched across the corn, having little bells suspended
to it by threads, so as almost to touch the ground, two persons
holding it, and as they advance shaking it from time to time. As soon
as the prisoners are secured, the march is continued towards the nets
at the end of the field; and in this manner great numbers of quails,
both male and female, are procured either for the house or for the
table.
ATTRACTIVE QUALITIES.--Besides beauty of form and plumage, the song of
this bird is no slight recommendation to the amateur. In the breeding
season, that of the male commences by repeating softly, tones
resembling "_verra, verra_," followed by the word "_pieveroie_,"
uttered in a bold tone, with the neck raised, the eyes shut, and the
head inclined on one side. Those that repeat the last syllables ten
or twelve times consecutively, are the most esteemed. That of the
female only consists of "_verra, verra_," "_pupu, pupu_," the two
last syllables being those by which the male and the female attract
each other's attention; when alarmed or angry their cry resembles
"_guillah!_" but at other times it is only a murmur, resembling the
purring of a cat.
The quail never sings when left to run about in a light room, except
during the night, but continually when in a darkened cage. Those
reared from the nest begin to sing the end of December, and continue
till September; whilst those taken full grown rarely commence till
the beginning of May, and cease in August.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE STORK.]