Did you know?

The tiny Quail is one of the birds that few people actually get to see, though the ‘wet-my-lips’ song of the male is well known, emanating from deep within a grain field. Unusually for a gamebird, the Quail is migrant, coming to the UK as a summer visitor, from May onwards. It only comes in small numbers (often fewer than 500 singing males), though, spread thinly across the country. Like several other birds which are rarely seen but more often heard, it is predominantly a night-singer, often starting off as the sun falls. If you don’t mind not actually seeing a bird, the Quail present a good opportunity for finding your own scarce bird, just occasionally rewarding evening drives and pauses to listen. Quails reach sexual maturity remarkably quickly. So quickly, in fact, that birds hatched in the spring breed later in the same summer