Quail surprise!

Ringer Greg Conway writes:

When one of my trainee ringers, mentioned that he had a 'good number' of Quail on a local farm in south Norfolk, and recalling the apparent ease with which this species is caught in Belgium and the Netherlands, I decide to give it a try. However, given the low success rate when attempting to catch in the autumn, I didn't expect to to catch any. Just another exercise in put nets up and taking down again.


So on 11th June, just as the sun was setting, we carefully put up a triangle in a cereal crop. By the time the nets were set, up to 4 males were calling nearby and we got the impression that something was watching us! As I made a final check of the net I was totally amazed to watch a male pop up from within the triangle of nets and jump into the net. It was immediately extracted and processed, then I started the tape lure (having the appropriate tape luring licence) and a female immediately flew into the net and again was promptly extracted. It was an hour later though before the third and final Quail of the evening was caught.

If that wasn't reward enough, I was amazed to receive notification recently that one of the three was shot in September at Montegut-Arros, Midi-Pyrenees, France.

Four Quail were ringed in Britain & Ireland in 2010 and we are up to 7 so far this year. It will be interesting to see how many were ringed this year, once all the data is in our database.

Thanks to John Secker for the photo.

Our first foreign Quail movement

We recently reported on the first foreign-ringed Quail in the UK (taken by a Peregrine - more details in this post), and now we have our first foreign movement from the UK.


XE97619 was one of three birds ringed in June 2009 near Matlock in Derbyshire (two of these are pictured above). The summer was a great year for Quail, and this particular site had 8 or 9 calling males, with three birds caught using a tape-lure (under licence of course) and triangle of nets! It was sadly shot at Aliud, Spain, on 18 August 2009, presumably on southward migration (birds will generally winter around the Mediterranean and even into North Africa).


View BTO Quail in Spain in a larger map

Thanks to Steve Moores for the photo and info on these birds.

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We have just got some extra information on movements around Europe, and Lyndon Kearsley has kindly produced the map below of Quail movements to/from Belgium.


View KwartelHervangsten in a larger map

Peregrine prey...

More London buses! We rarely hear of anything REALLY exciting being found below Peregrine nests, but this week was an exception.

First in was a Hobby ringed in the nest in Herefordshire in 2007. Just its leg and ring were then found in the nest of a Spanish Peregrine on 9 May 2009. This nest was at Balmaseda, near Bilbao in northern Spain, only a short hop from the UK, and it had probably been caught on spring migration.

The other, even more unlikely report, was of a Quail leg found underneath the Peregrine nest in Lincolnshire. We thought this must be a mistake, but the Belgians confirmed this was correct. It was ringed on spring migration, on 5 May, so wquite a quick mocvement. Its been an amazing year for Quail nationally, with huge numbers of sightings, and this gives us some idea of where they arrived from.

We've only ever had two recoveries of ringed Quail (but we have only ringed 59 in 100 years), and this is actually our first ever foreign movement.

The Hobby was also the first to be found in Spain, and the map below shows the other foreign movements. Foreign-ringed birds found here are in red, and BTO-ringed birds found abroad are in blue.


View Hobbies in a larger map