must notice and learn from actual experience, and the various calls and notes are so individual that when once really noted are never forgotten, and to at all a good ear these aids to identification are as sure as if the very bird were placed in his hands. Quail pass through Egypt when on their way to their more northerly breeding quarters early in March and April. Some few may remain the year through, but they are a small minority. The return to Egypt is from September to November, and it is during these journeyings that the vast quantities are caught in nets, which later are sent to every European city for the tables of the rich. Mr. C. D. Burnett-Stuart very kindly has given me the following notes:—
“From Alexandria to Port Said the whole length of coast is practically hung with nets; but Government lately has forbidden the placing of the nets on the actual foreshore which it controls, which were the most killing positions, and the nets can now only be placed farther back on private and cultivated ground. The numbers of Quail which must migrate passes belief, for it is recorded that in Coronation Year five million were ordered and supplied for the English market alone.”
“The route which they take leaving Egypt seems to be roughly the great valley of the Nile right to its entrances to the Mediterranean; but on the return journey from Europe they seem to reach the shores of Egypt, then turn eastwards and follow the line of the Suez Canal and Red Sea to about Kosseir and the old river-bed, then across the desert to the Nile, and away spreading themselves over the heart of Africa.”
“On their arrival in Egypt they are so dog-tired that they can sometimes be caught by hand, and have been actually so caught in houses that they have entered in a sort of dazed condition. The poor Quail are also caught in large numbers by a drop-net whilst on passage down the river, in clover, or any other suitable crop, the fowler calling them up to his net by a reed whistle. Quail shooting used to be a more favourite sport than it is now since Denshawie days, and two guns have on one occasion obtained 252 birds in the day at Ayat, fifty miles south of Cairo.”
After this one is not disposed to say “liar” even to the ancient historian who recorded the sinking of certain vessels in the ocean, because of the innumerable Quail that settled on them; and one readily accepts the story of the Israelites’ camp being covered all over two cubits high by falling Quails. Canon Tristam has a note on this incident and “the fully satisfied hungry people,” that the very “Hebrew name selav, in its Arabic form salwa, signifies fat, very descriptive of the round plump form and fat flesh of the Quail.”
Ten is said to be the average of the clutch of eggs laid, which number partly explains the enormous flocks which come year after year in spite of the incessant raids made upon them. If by chance you do see Quails rise from the crops you are instantly reminded of partridges; but they never rise as high as the latter birds, and though I have heard of their answering to being “driven,” I should think they give very unsatisfactory shooting, as they are rarely more than a foot or two above the crops, whether they be clover or young corn.