Many of us have eaten them in the South of France during the grape season. The birds can be caught by the hand when they have, as the French say, intoxicated themselves by feeding on the ripe grapes. During the winter and the early spring they feed on the seeds of the plantain, dock, vetch, and chickweed. Slugs also and insects help to form the bird’s diet. The Italian’s notion that it is unwholesome to eat Quails at a given season arises, no doubt, from the fact that it is pleasanter eating and the flesh is plumper at certain times of the year than at others, owing largely to the varying nature of the bird’s food.
The Quail is a favourite pet in Spain; the birds are kept much in cages there, and are valued because of their song; and that the Quails have been taken on the Continent in vast numbers when netting them, at the time of the vernal migration, is not to be denied. “We remember,” says Lord Lilford, “seeing a steamer at Bressina, in the month of May, 1874, one of whose officers assured us that he had six thousand pairs of Quails alive on board, all destined for the London market. The unhappy birds are carried in low flat cages on boxes, wired only in front, and it is surprising what a very small percentage of them die on the voyage, unless “a sea” happens to break over them. They thrive well on millet, and soon become fat; but, in our opinion, this traffic should be prohibited, as the unfortunate birds are caught on their way to their breeding quarters, and some of them at all events would afford sport at a legitimate season when naturally fit for the table.” “Chaud comme caille,” says the French proverb, because Quails are exceedingly amorous and pugnacious at the time of pairing. They thrive well in confinement, and are easily “fatted up” for the table.
USEFUL.
THE STARLING.