SIX months' bird collecting in EGYPT. 1 83 



128. Quail, Cotumix coimmmis, Bonnat (Hasselquist, 44) ; 

 " Semman." 



A few winter in Egypt, but not very many: 1875 was 

 evidently a late season for them. Though most writers 

 speak of having found them in February, we found no 

 quantity until March. On March 2nd eight were flushed, 

 and previously only pairs or single birds were seen.* By 

 the 14th they had begun to arrive in large quantities. Then 

 one could realize the scene in the Israelitish camp, when 

 " the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and 

 all the next day, and they gathered the Quails ; he that 

 gathered least gathered ten homers" {Niinib. xi., 31, 32). 

 Out of a patch of lentils twenty feet square I have seen, I 

 may safely say, fifty brace rise. 



Although they are gregarious in the strictest sense of the 

 word, they never fly as a flock, but each, regardless of its 

 neighbour, goes its own course, straight and quick, about a 

 yard from the ground. They almost invariably get up at 

 your feet, and seldom fly more than 400 yards. I never 

 saw any on passage by day, and it is said that unlike the 

 Storks they only migrate by night. f As Captain Shelley 

 remarks, they are very unwilling to rise during the heat of 

 the day. Morning and evening are the best times to shoot 

 them ; and ripe barley, or strips of lentils (ads.) just ready 

 to cut, the best places in which to look for them. It is wiser 

 not to go into barley fields, etc., where the business of har- 

 vest has commenced, for the following reason, the national 

 laziness shows itself in the Arab husbandman, who prefers 

 reaping as he sits. Quails fly low, and his head, hardly 



'* On one day in February as many as seven were seen, of course not 

 together. 



f Possibly it is because Storks are voiceless that they migrate by 

 day and sleep by night. 



