European quail is heard as three chirps more than seen
Coturnix coturnix, a small ground-nesting phasianid, migrates between Eurasian breeding grounds and African or south Asian winters. Linnaeus named it in 1758; its trademark triple chirp carries farther across fields than a glimpse of the bird in grass.
The common or European quail lives mostly as a voice in cereal fields and open scrub. Nominate birds breed from Europe and northwest Africa to Mongolia and northern India, then winter in Africa and parts of south and southwest Asia. A Cape Verde form, inopinata, shows how islands hold distinct populations over time.
Linnaeus first called it Tetrao coturnix in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, and the genus Coturnix followed in 1764; coturnix is simply Latin for quail. The bird is 16 to 18 centimetres long and weighs 70 to 140 grams, heaviest just before migration, streaked brown with a white eyestripe. It eats weed seeds, spilled grain and insects on the ground, creeping away through crops rather than flying, and even when flushed it stays low and drops back into cover. Males reach the breeding grounds first; in northern Europe egg-laying starts in mid-May in a shallow scrape 7 to 13.5 centimetres across.
The IUCN rates it least concern, though it is declining in places such as Ireland, and attempts to introduce it to Mauritius failed. Hunting on passage is intense: in autumn 2012 an estimated 3.4 million were netted in northern Sinai and perhaps 12.9 million across Egypt. Eating quail can be risky, since birds that have fed on certain still-disputed plants can cause coturnism, with muscle pain and possible kidney failure. History is full of them, from the wind-blown flocks the Israelites ate in the Book of Numbers to Jane Seymour's pregnancy craving in 1537, which sent courtiers abroad hunting for supplies.
Source: Common quail
