COMMON QUAIL. 133 



THE COMMON QUAIL. 



Co t urn ix com miin is. 

 The Quail is a summer visitor, but several instances, to be 

 enumerated presently, o£ its occurrence dui'ing tlie winter are 

 upon record. Always irregular in its appearance, at the 

 present day it visits us in fewer numbers and more intermit- 

 tently than was formerly the case — a circumstance noticed by 

 ornithologists in many parts of England. Old keeper Cook 

 told me that in his young days he has seen four or five 

 'bevies'' in a day on Kingham open fields, where they are 

 now rare^ and many sportsmen speak of the scarcity of these 

 birds as compared with former years. A few pairs doubtless 

 still come to us annually, and breed in various parts of 

 the county. Mr. "Warner wiites of Standlake, ' a pair or 

 two of these birds occur in this neighbourhood most seasons ' 

 {3IS. notes), and the late Rev. T. W. Falcon informed me that 

 Quails, in some seasons, were very common about Charlton-on- 

 Otmoor {in lit.). In the north of the coimty I have heard of 

 a few nests being mown out at various times, but, save in 

 exceptional years, it is uncommon. Mr. T. D. Denchfield 

 tells me he has met with them in one or two years recently at 

 Barford and Bloxham. In certain seasons, however, a con- 

 siderable immigration of Quails takes place. The year 1870 

 appears to have been a noted Quail season, and several exam- 

 ples were preserved by the bird-stuffers. After this date 

 no visitation of this species in any numbers occurred for 

 fifteen years; and, although we met with a single bird at 

 Bloxham in September, 1878, in which parish one was shot in 

 the October following {Zoologist, 1879, p. 129), and another 

 was procured at Brize Norton in September, 1880 (G. Arnatt, 

 MS.), yet when writing in the spring of 1885 I coiild state 

 tliat I had seen no eggs taken in the county during the last 

 ten years. The year 1885 was, however, a great Quail season, 

 though the birds do not seem to have been noticed in the 



