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PICTURES OF BIRD LIFE. 
The Quail is generally regarded as a summer migrant to Great Britain, but 
numbers remain during the winter, especially in Ireland. On the east of Scotland 
it is by no means so common as on the west, though met with in nearly all 
counties from Berwick to Orkney. Its nest has been found in the Outer Hebrides, 
in Lewis, and North Uist.* It is far from uncommon, however, in many parts 
of England, being often overlooked, perhaps, from its small size. Almost every 
old sportsman, however, has at one time or other shot one or two of these pretty 
little birds. The bill is slender and convex above, curved towards the end. The 
bird possesses no red eyebrow, like the Grouse and Ptarmigan, and no spur on 
its tarsus ; its tail is short, and wings rounded. The head is mottled with black 
and reddish-brown, with three parallel longitudinal streaks; the upper plumage is 
ash-brown, straw-coloured, and black; the neck reddish-brown, with a double 
crescent of dusky brown ; breast pale brown, bill and feet yellowish-brown. The 
female's colours are less distinct, and she wants the double crescent on the neck. 
The whole length of the bird is eight inches—just the length of our common 
winter visitant the redwing, and rather less than that of its brother bird the thrush. 
The Quail proper is found only in the Old World and in Australia, and yet its 
geographical distribution is very extensive. No other gallinaceous bird possesses 
so wide a range in the Old World. It is abundant in North Africa and most parts 
of India and China, while the whole of the southern portions of Siberia, and 
every country in Europe except the extreme northernmost districts, are visited 
annually or permanently inhabited by it. Very many stay in the southern parts 
of Europe throughout the year, but their numbers are reinforced every spring by 
large flocks which migrate from the parched plains of Africa in search of more 
abundant supplies of food and congenial breeding-places. “ So vast and countless, ’ 
adds Gould, “ are the flocks which often pass over to the islands and European 
shores of the Mediterranean, that a mode of wholesale slaughter is usually put 
in practice against them—a circumstance which no doubt tends to limit their 
inordinate increase; ” that is, they are netted and snared wherever they appear, 
and furnish an abundant food-supply for France, Spain, and Portugal, and the 
Riviera. Not only so, but enormous numbers are also sent over to the London 
market, travelling alive in cages like trays, which just admit of the poor birds 
standing upright in them, as they would otherwise beat themselves to pieces. To 
give some idea of the numbers of the Quail on the Continent we extract a 
passage from Johns’ “ British Birds,” which that author himself quotes from a 
* Harting’s “Handbook of Biit’.sh Birds,” p. 40. 
