BIRDS THAT MIGRATE

Feilding Star, Volume 5, Issue 991, 5 January 1927, Page 8

BIRDS THAT MIGRATE

QUEERNESS OF THE QUAIL. Just- what is the feeling that comes over birds and makes them want to migrate nobody h;is discover-* ed. One naturalist thinks that it is a sort of sixth sense. One of the most curious instances of this migration is that of quail. They begin some time- in September to move their haunts in Russia and seek out their witner quarters in Africa. This migration goes on for about'two months. But quail are poor fliers and In every country through which they pass a terrible toll is taken by the inhabitants. If quail were not the most reproductive of all birds they would soou be extinguished. A writer in the London Daily Mail describes a little island less than three miles' in length in the Bay of Naples, where 200,000 quail are netted every year, and also states that in the Greek Archipelago and in parts of the Pelopo’nessus every man, woman and child is busy some two months in the year catching and salting quail. The writer says that in China in cold weather the peasants carry quail in 'their pockets as hand warmers.