Bird guide Ian Parsons
It’s a real treat if you catch a glimpse of the elusive Quail, which often hides in long grass
throws the spotlight on the mysterious and elusive Quail, a bird you’re more likely to hear than see!
Is there a more frustrating bird when it comes to birdwatching than the Quail? This small migratory bird has to be the ultimate camouflaged skulker, and to make it worse, it seems to mock you with its call as you search for it! I have listened to Quails calling hundreds of times, but I have only ever seen a handful of these elusive birds, and all but one of these was just a quick glimpse. Standing in long grass on a warm sunny day, listening to the beautiful and distinctive ‘wet my lips’ call just a few metres away from you, is part of many a seasoned birdwatcher’s experience. They sound so close that you must surely see them and, just when you think you have pinpointed where the bird is, it calls again, this time several metres to the left or right...
The Quail is a member of the pheasant family, but, unlike its much bigger relative, this is a bird that actually belongs here, having a large natural range that during the breeding season, reaches from Morocco to Britain and right across Europe into Turkey and Russia, continuing through into central Asia.
In Britain, the Quail starts to arrive on our shores in mid-april and can be present throughout the spring and summer.
However, when it comes to the Quail, there is always much variability in terms of dates, numbers and locations! It is an enigma of a bird in many ways, its secretive habits making it extremely hard to study in the wild.
Reluctant flyers
Quail numbers are small. It is estimated that there is only an average of 540 calling males each year in Britain, and, due to the enigmatic ways of the Quail, no one is quite certain what that figure means in relation to the numbers of actual breeding pairs.
Quails are tiny, only about 17cm in length (a Blackbird is around 25cm) and their streaky brown plumage provides perfect camouflage as they keep low to the ground, in among the grasses in which they reside. They are very reluctant to fly during the daytime, but if you do see one flushed (one of the few glimpses I have had of Quail was one flushed by a resplendent looking male Montagu’s Harrier – I didn’t know which one to watch!), they will strike you as being long winged for such a small bird.
The wings are normally a bit of a blur as they fly with fast wing beats. Don’t expect to watch it for long though, they fly
low over the grasses and very quickly drop down into obscurity once again. There is another, extremely intriguing, aspect to the Quail and that is its potential breeding behaviour. The Quail is a bird that exhibits something the Germans call Zwischenzug! Now, before I define that word for you, it needs to be made clear that the secretive habits of the Quail in the wild make it particularly difficult to prove anything when it comes to the bird’s behaviour – quite simply there just aren’t enough records.
Inter-breeding season
What we do know though, is that in years when there are wet springs in the Mediterranean basin, Quails will breed early in Spain, Portugal and North Africa because the grass growth, and therefore nesting cover, is already high enough to breed in when the birds arrive from their wintering grounds. We also know from the few ringing records that there are for the species, that some Quails move further north into Europe later on in the season. There are records of Quail ringed in Tunisia in May (after the initial breeding period) being recovered in Europe later in the same summer. This mid-breeding season movement is highly unusual among birds and although we don’t have a word for this, the Germans do – Zwischenzug! The fact that there is evidence showing that the birds do indeed Zwischenzug (it’s a great word to drop into conversation in your local hide...) raises the possibility
QUAIL NUMBERS ARE SMALL. IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THERE IS ONLY AN AVERAGE OF 540 CALLING MALES EACH YEAR IN BRITAIN...
of something else remarkable.
Let me set the scene: it is a wet February and early March in the Iberian Peninsula, and when the Quails arrive to breed in late March the grasses are already plenty high enough to provide nesting cover, so they get on and have their first brood quickly. By the beginning of May, as the chicks fledge, the plains of Spain are wilting rapidly under the hot spring sunshine, reducing the cover available for the birds to breed again (they will have two broods when possible). The birds then exhibit Zwischenzug and move further north, reaching France and even Britain, where the birds arrive in mid-may, around about the time that ‘our’ Quail are breeding.
From Spain to the Plain?
Could it be that these Quails then go on to have their second brood in a completely different country to the one in which they had their first? Could a bird that bred a few weeks before on the plains of Spain then breed again on Salisbury Plain? The evidence is indeed circumstantial, although both Italian and Spanish authors have in the past asserted that this indeed happens, but it is certainly an intriguing possibility and would surely be unique in Western Palaearctic birds if it was the case.
The problem is proving it – the secret behaviour of the birds and the scarcity of records makes it extremely difficult to do so. The ultimate proof of course, would be a female with a ring observed on a nest in the early spring in one country being observed again later in the year on a nest in another country, but as Quail nests are very rarely recorded (the BTO only have one nest record for the species) the odds of this happening are very slim indeed.
Is it possible? Well, yes it is, but does it actually happen? At the moment, no one can say for certain, but just imagine if it is true – what an amazing occurrence in our birding world!
One thing is for certain, when it comes to our knowledge of birds, there are still many, many things we don’t know, showing that ongoing scientific study by ornithologists and careful observation by birdwatchers are vitally important if we want to really know what is happening with our birds.
These cryptic crosswords of the bird world are certainly a challenge for any birder hoping to get a Quail on their #My200birdyear list.
My advice? Make this the one bird you will list on call alone. And make sure you let us know if you see one.
• With thanks to Greg Conway of the BTO for his help in tracking down information on Quail movements.