Common Quail

Warm early summer nights can be very quiet in terms of nocturnal migration. But especially in the beginning of June you might hear the familiar wet-my-lips or pick per-wick of a Common Quail, maybe even from the balcony of your apartment in the middle of a big city (eg, example a). The quail you are hearing is very likely to be singing in flight. In fact, its wet-my-lips is the same that you can hear from birds singing on the ground during the breeding season.

Common Quails have a mysterious life strategy: After breeding in early spring in North Africa, individuals irrupt north into southern Europe as early as April and May to breed again. This often leads to a second wave of migrants in early summer in central and northern Europe, also involving birds just a few weeks old (Moreau 1951). Once again, males prospect for females, flying while singing their wet-my-lips (Rodríguez-Teijeiro et al 2006).

The wet-my-lips song or NFC (in this case it is the same) is often introduced by one or several hoarse mau-wau. Less often, birds pass by solely with their mau-wau but without wet-my-lips, and thirdly intermediate versions of the two sometimes occur, which can be anything from mau-wau-lips, wet-mau-wau or even wet-my-mau-wau!

wet-my-lips

• whipping timbre
• trisyllabic, with the interval between first and second syllables being twice as long as the interval between second and third syllables
• interval 1-2: range 163 – 314 ms (n = 23), interval 2-3: range 97 – 144 ms (n=23); measured between maximum frequency points, as in Guyomarc’h et al (1998)
• duration of a single syllable 21-41 ms (90% range; median 30 ms; n = 23)
• gap between syllable 2-3 filled with a faint hoarse downslur (a, b) similar in timbre to mau-wau; only visible in sonagrams from good quality recordings

Effects of recording quality

• At close range, a connecting downward line between second and third syllable (ie, between my and lips) with hoarse timbre is visible.
• In distant calls, individual syllables may appear shorter, and maximum frequency may appear lower than it actually is.

mau-wau

• meowing and hoarse timbre
• overall shape similar to a bold-typeface ‘M’
• disyllabic; sometimes second syllable wau distinctly louder (f)
• mean total duration 306 ms (±37 ms; n = 15)
• mean duration of second syllable wau 116 ms (±23 ms; n = 15)

Effects of recording quality

• The mau-wau is only audible at close range (it is notably quieter than wet-my-lips).

Intermediate between wet-my-lips and mau-wau

wet-my-lips

• Spotted Crake Porzana porzana NFCs have the same whipping timbre but are always given one at a time, not in a trisyllabic rhythm as in Common Quail. It might happen that a distant intermediate-type Quail NFC has only one ‘whipped’ note, and any accompanying mau-wau is too faint to hear. In that case duration is the key: Spotted Crake’s NFC is twice as long as a single syllable of Common Quail.
• Japanese Quail Coturnix japonica is more commonly held in captivity than Common Quail and sometimes released into the wild (eg for hunting). Singing birds at night can be expected literally anywhere. Maybe even your neighbour keeps one in the backyard, which can occasionally be heard from your listening post. However, the song is markedly different. It is also trisyllabic, but the gap between the first two syllables is shorter than between the second and the last (the opposite in Common). Furthermore, the last syllable is a longer trill, which makes it fairly unmistakeable.

mau-wau

• If not familiar with the mau-wau, you may think a domestic cat or other mammal is calling.

• anywhere: over towns, forests, mountains; but not known to call offshore
• strictly nocturnal: no known diurnal song-flight
• typically in the middle of the night, but recorded any time between dusk and dawn

Due to its exceptional inter-season movements (Zwischenzug) with males dispersing and looking for new females in early summer, be careful when trying to assess numbers of individuals per night. One individual may fly more than once per night over your listening post. However, it is possible to discriminate between individuals by measurements taken from their wet-my-lips as well as their introductory mau-wau (Guyomarc’h et al 1998). These concern the length of the intervals between the three syllables of wet-my-lips.

Females are not known to utter either mau-wau or wet-my-lips. Therefore we must assume that all individuals we hear are males. Females have a distinctive advertising call that they use on the ground: a disyllabic, insect-like ti-dik, ti-dik, ti-dik. We are not aware of this ever having been recorded from a bird in flight, either by day or night.

Guyomarc’h, J C, Aupiais, A & Guyomarc’h, C 1998. Individual differences in the long-distance vocalizations used during pair bonding in European Quail (Coturnix coturnix). Ethology Ecology & Evolution 10: 333-346.

Moreau, R E 1951. The British status of the Quail and some problems of its biology. British Birds 44: 257-275.

Rodríguez-Teijeiro, J D, Barroso, A, Gallego, S, Puigcerver, M & Vinyoles, D 2006. Orientation-cage experiments with the European Quail during the breeding season and autumn migration. Canadian Journal of Zoology 84: 887-894.