THE QUAIL 143 



summer visitor arriving annually in the spring for the 

 purpose of breeding, and leaving some time about 

 the end of September, or during the first half of 

 October. 



During summer quail may be found sparingly, but 

 widely-distributed throughout the British Isles. In 

 most English counties, from Cornwall to the bleaker 

 lands north of the Humber, from that eastern shoulder 

 known as East Anglia right to the far west, quail 

 are to be noted in numbers varying in accordance 

 with the suitability of certain districts to their require- 

 ments or to the strength of their annual visitation. 

 In Scotland, these birds are occasionally met with all 

 over the country, and they have been found nesting 

 in the distant Outer Hebrides, the Orkney and the 

 Shetland Islands. In Ireland, quail were tolerably 

 plentiful during the first part and up to about the 

 middle of the nineteenth century. They were then 

 commonly found upon the farm lands throughout the 

 year, being, in fact, more numerous than the partridge, 

 and as a consequence sportsmen of the period were 

 able to make considerable bags of these birds. Quail 

 evince much partiality for the cultivated lands, and 

 their gradual decrease in Ireland has by some been 

 attributed to the reversion of considerable stretches 

 of the tilled lands to their original condition of pasture, 

 consequent upon the great famine of 1846-48. Since 

 the early eighties of last century, few if any winter quail 

 have been recorded in Ireland. 



Occasionally during the past twenty years or more 

 an extraordinary influx of migratory quail has been 

 noted in Ireland, and in England and Scotland also. 

 In the years 1892,^1893, and 1896 we had remarkable 



