SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT. 183 
128. QUAIL, Coturnix communis, 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” (Wwmb. 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 asa 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.t 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. 
+ Possibly it is because Storks are voiceless that they migrate by 
day and sleep by night. 
