THE COMMON QUAIL. 
67 
from Aberdeenshire. Its occurrence farther north has not been re- 
corded. In these same districts they are now very uncertain ; we have 
known of broods only twice, and occasionally have shot a straggler 
apparently on its way to the south. To use Mr. St. John’s words : — 
“ The quail is sometimes killed here [Morayshire], but very rarely. I 
once shot a couple on the Eoss-shire side of the Moray firth, but never 
happened to meet with one on this side, though I have heard of their 
being killed, and also of their having been seen in the spring time, as 
if they came occasionally to breed. ”f The same author states that the 
quail appears occasionally near Dunrobin, Sutherlandshire.]: A nest of 
the quail with twelve eggs was found in the summer of 1848, in a field 
of hay, in the parish of New Deer, Aberdeenshire. There is said to 
be a similar nest in the same farm every year. H One quail is recorded 
to have been shot in the Orkney Islands.^ 
This bird seems rather to have increased latterly in Scotland. In 
1839, I was informed by a friend, who had shot regularly for upwards 
of twenty years over different parts of the south of Ayrshire, and par- 
ticularly in the maritime districts, that he never met with one. Within 
that period he had heard of only two having occurred. One was seen 
on the shooting grounds of Duisk Lodge ; the other was shot on the 
property of Mr. Eotch of Drumlamford, and is preserved as a bird of 
extraordinary rarity. In the summer of 1846, two or three brace of 
quails were seen about Ballantrae, and a few killed at other places 
within fifteen miles of that village. In 1848, I was told by Mr. Wil- 
liam Smellie Watson, of Edinburgh, that two nests of quails were 
found in a meadow at Craiglockhart, near that city, in the spring of 
1847. They were discovered during the mowing of the grass; in 
one nest were eight and in the other twelve eggs. He was told of a 
third nest being found at Duddingston . When in the island of Islay, 
in January 1849, I learned that quails are very scarce there ; the keeper 
at Ardimersy had seen but three during nine years ; all in the autumn. 
Another person, who ha!d been keeper at Islay House, and has since had 
a farm, met with only three of these birds during a much longer 
* Br. Birds, vol. iii. p. 106. 
f Wild Sports of the HigMands, p. 147, ch. 18 (1846). 
I Tour in Sutherland, vol. i. 135 (1849). 
II Rev. Janies Smith in “Zoologist,” November 1848, 
^ Hist. Nat. Orcadensis, p. 57 (1848). 
