QUAIL SHOOTING 
INDIA. — ^The European quail is found throughout India in considerable 
numbers during the cold weather, most of them migrating during the 
rains and breeding elsewhere ; but a few remain to breed in various parts 
of the country, especially towards the west and north-west, as well as in 
Rajpootana and Bundelkund. It is less numerous towards the south of 
India than further north. In some localities and in certain seasons it 
occurs in great profusion in long grass, cornfields and fields of pulse, 
affording excellent sport with the gun, fifty couple being not unfrequently 
bagged by one gun in a morning’s shooting in the North-west Provinces. 
In parts of Bengal, also, quails are numerous. Jerdon heard of seventy- 
five couple being killed by two guns. 
Blanford states* that quail arrive in Northern India from Central Asia 
in September, but are not usually seen in the Deccan or Bengal before 
October. Occasionally some, even large parties, arrive in Sind, Cutch 
and Guzerat from the latter end of August till December, coming from 
seaward, probably from Arabia. The majority, as a rule, leave the North 
of India in December and January for the South, returning, and at times 
abounding, in the ripening wheat and barley fields of the North-west 
Provinces, Sind, and the Punjab in March and April, and finally migrating 
northward in the latter month or May. A few, however, remain to breed 
in India, and nests have been taken not only in Northern India, but also 
at Purneah in Bengal, Hoshangabad in the Central Provinces, and even 
Satara, in the Bombay Deccan. 
Dr Leith Adams, in his entertaining volume “ Wanderings of a Natura- 
list in India,” writing on quails, makes the following observation 
” Proceeding northwards from Wazeerabad, we entered a district more 
or less uncultivated, and often covered for miles with tall scrubby jungle, 
where the sportsman might pick up a few quails at almost any season of 
the year. . . . From the great numbers met with in the fields during the 
ripening of the grain, and their sudden disappearance afterwards, it is 
generally supposed they migrate, and in certain situations this may 
doubtless be the case; but I am inclined to believe that in general they 
disperse themselves over the jungles of the north-west, and congregate 
when the wheat and barley are beginning to ripen. ”f 
BURMA. — ^Blyth has recorded the occurrence of the quail in Burma 
Fauna of British India (Birds) vol. iv, p. 115. 
i'See also Jouru. Asiatic Soc. Bengal (1875), p. 151. 
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