Coturnix coturnix, the smallest of the European game birds, belongs to the same family, Phasianinae, as the partridge and indeed looks like a very small partridge. Its numerous relations around the world include birds known as blue quails, brown quails, and bush quails; plus, in N. America, mountain quails, California quails, and the bobwhites, Colinus spp.
The derivation of the word ‘quail’ has been charmingly explored by Francesca Greenoak (1979) who points out that it is an imitative name, cognate with ‘quack’. The same author comments that quail were not eaten much in classical times, apparently because they were thought to be unwholesome because of eating poisonous plants such as hemlock as they paused for refreshment in their migratory flights across the Mediterranean. This problem, under the medical term ‘coturnism’, may still arise as a sort of poisoning by proxy.
The migration of these birds could be a remarkable sight. As the Book of Exodus has it, ‘and it came to pass at even, the quails came up and covered the camp’. The writer Claudia Roden recalls, ‘My favourite [picnic] was on the dunes of Agami in Alexandria. It was timed to coincide with the arrival of migrating quails on the beaches. The birds fell exhausted, to be caught in large nets and collected in baskets. They were cleaned and marinated in a rich cumin and coriander sauce and grilled on the beach over small fires.’
In England, the quail was a summer visitor, though the name was also applied to the corncrake, a permanent resident.
Nowadays quails are appreciated as food, despite their small size, and in Europe are commercially reared, for both eggs and meat. In Pakistan they are prepared in curry-type dishes and they also appear further east, for example in Laos, as a popular food whenever available.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Greenoak, Francesca (1979), All the Birds of the Air, London: André Deutsch.
