The bird the quail is the smallest of all poultry. It is a very pretty bird. Some say it is like a partridge, but actually it is not as large as a partridge.

Quails are migratory, which means they travel at times during the year in order to find a place with the best weather. Quails that live in places with all round good weather, such as Italy and Portugal are not migratory.

Quails can be found in England, but this is a result of aviculture and the breeding stock came from France originally.

To hunt quails you use a quail pipe which is a tool that imitates the call of quail, and they quickly rush to its sound, and are thus captured.

During the winter most quails are to be found in Africa, and in the summer they make their way to Asia and Europe. These migratory patterns make for a good opportunity to catch them, and they are often found tired in Egypt en route to Europe, and caught in large numbers. In fact, in Stade's Travels in Turkey, that, "near Constantinople in the migrating season, the sun is often nearly obscured by the prodigious flights of quails, which alight on the coasts of the Black Sea, near the Bosphorus, and are caught by means of nets spread on high poles, planted along the cliff, some yards from its edge, against which the birds, exhausted by their passage over the sea, strike themselves and fall."

Quails have been noted throughput history, and even have a mention in the Bible (Numbers xi. 32), when God sent quails to feed the masses in the desert. In Roman times they were kept as fighting birds, and this gave rise to the proverb, "as quarrelsome as quails in a cage."

Quails nest in a very basic manner. They just lay their eggs in a few sticks that they put together in a wheat field. In captivity you will want a quail pen, which you can use for breeding quail, transporting quail, or raising quail to eat.

Quails come from tropical, subtropical, and temperate places so it depends on which one you get as to whether it is a tropical pet! If that is something you are interested in then check out tropcial pets