LIVE QUAIL CATCHING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3828, 2 November 1936, Page 3

LIVE QUAIL CATCHING

ARAB METHODS EXPLAINED. Writing in the London Observer, Major C. S. Jarvis, late Governor of Sinai, throws some light on a littleknown industry. We quote:— In a very short time quail will be appearing on the menus of all the leading hotels and restaurants of London, and the probability is that few, if any, of those who order these succulent little birds have any idea of how they are transported from Africa to the dining tables of London and the Continent. If the full details of the cruelty of the quail trade were known to those who enjoy them as a pure luxury dish it is unlikely that the demand for them would justify the supply. The quail (Coturnix), which is the smallest game bird, and, incidentally, the only one with a marked migratory instinct, breeds and spends his summer in the cornfields of Southern Europe, and in August he makes his way across the Mediterranean to his winter quarters in the Sudan, Abyssinia, and Lake Chad.

He is not captured in any great numbers in Europe, for the simple reas.on that, being scattered over a large area, he offers little opportunity to those who wish to obtain him for the market. When, however, he arrives in mid-August in a tired condition on the North African shores, he offers an easy opportunity to the Arab quail-netters of those areas. THE BIBLE STORY. The quail is one of the few birds of whose movements we have definite historical proof going back some 3500 years, for when Moses led the Israelites through Sinai during the Wanderings the host fed upon them on two occasions. They came in on the wind from the sea, “as it were a day’s journey on this side, and as it were a day’s journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth.” This quotation from Numbers cannot be taken literally, of course, for two cubits high upon the face of the earth does not mean that the birds were stacked up to that depth, but that, being tired from their long flight, they were flying extremely low, and could be easily knocked down with palm branches. In any case, it gives the impression that they existed in far greater numbers then than they do to-day. In the past the migration of quail was general all along the North African coast to the Palestine frontier, but with the extermination of the species that has been going on for many years the bird is now seen in only small quantities west of Mersa Metruh, on the Egyptian coast. The quail, on their migration southward, flying in small groups of twenty or thirty, come in from the Mediterranean in the first light before sunrise, and, being tired from the flight, come down immediately they reach the shore and scuttle into the nearest patch of cover. The Arabs on the Libyan and Sinai desert have a variety of methods of catching them; in Sinai huge trammel nets fifteen feet high are erected on poles along the shore, and the quail, in the half-light of dawn, either do not see them or are too weary to evade them, and are then gathered alive and placed in wooden crates.

TRAPPED. In Libya the Arab places small nets on the southern side of every small patch of scrub on the shore, and where natural cover does not exist he constructs small hides of rushes with openings to the north and south, the southern one being netted. The northern side is always left open, for the quail’s one idea on arrival on land is to rest in concealment, and the following morning, with the migratory instinct still strong within him, he runs out of his cover to the south to continue his flight, and becomes entangled in the net. A third method, usually employed by Arab children, is a small square net about four feet by four feet, suspended by light ropes from each corner. The boys flush the quail from a bush and mark him down; then, walking up quietly with the net suspended between them, they drop it neatly over the bit o fscrub in which the bird is hiding. At the end of the morning’s flight the captured birds are packed into four-storeyed crates made of palm branches and provided with food and water. The word “ packed ” is used literally, for the compartments are so low that the bird cannot raise his head above his back, and every inch of space is utilised, so that the occupants have great difficulty in moving. FIGHTS TO THE DEATH. The Arabs, who have no conception of the meaning of the word cruelty, do jthis because, though a certain number of birds die from asphyxiation and starvation through being unable to get to the front of the cage for food, a far greater number would be killed through the cock birds fighting if there were room to move. The quail is second only to the gamecock for pugnacity, and his first instinct when he has recovered from the ter-

ror of capture is to indulge in a fight to the death with his nearest neighbour The crates, when filled, are carried by camel to the nearest railway station, and are then despatched to Port Said or Alexandria, from which ports they are shipped, still packed like sardines, to Great Britain, France, and Italy, where people who should know better encourage the distasteful trade by paying a high price for the unfortunate little victims as they repose on their last resting-place, a piece of toast. Not only is the quail trade disgustingly cruel, but the bird, through bein gnetted in this methodical fashion, is being slowly and surely exterminated. In 1908 1,200,000 quail were shipped abroad from Egyptian ports, and in 1926, though the netting activity was intensified, the number had dropped to 500,000. These figures speak for themselves. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has taken the matter up in what one might call a half-hearted manner by asking Egypt to do what she can to prevent the trade, but the real remedy is so very simple and so near at hand. All one requires is a law in England, which should be extremely easy to pass, prohibiting the import of live quail. Then, if France, Germany, and other European countries followed suit, the difficulty would be solved., for one thing is quite certain: the Arab of Egypt would not take the trouble to net quail for love of the sport. If there was no market for the bird in Great Britain and on the Continent, the little quail would be allowed to live and continue his migrations across ■ the Mediterranean in peace.