By Magnus Robb, Lukas Pelikan & The Sound Approach

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 (e.g., example a).

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Common Quail 
Coturnix coturnix 
Friedländer Große Wiese, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, 02:41, 19 June 2019 (Lukas Pelikan). Flight song of one individual. You can clearly hear the bird moving from right to left. Background: singing Common Grasshopper Warbler Locustella naeviaand Whinchat Saxicola rubetra, and another very distant Common Quail. For more detail, see sonagram b) below.

Please use headphones

The quail you are hearing is very likely to be singing in flight. In fact, itswet-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!

Identification

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

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a) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany, 01:32, 29 May 2017 (Steve Klasan). A nocturnal migrant flying over inner-city Potsdam, with introductory mau-wau (not shown in sonagram).

b) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Friedländer Große Wiese, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, 02:41, 19 June 2019 (Lukas Pelikan). Flight song of one individual. Background: singing Common Grasshopper Warbler Locustella naevia and Whinchat Saxicola rubetra, and another very distant Common Quail. For a full sonagram of the same recording, see the top of the page.

c) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Castelo Branco, Rosmaninhal, Portugal, 04:11, 4 June 2013. Song in nocturnal flight. Background: Red-necked Nightjar Caprimulgus ruficollis and European Tree Cricket Oecanthus pellucens. 130604.MR.041114.31

d) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Felchow, Brandenburg, Germany, 03:38, 6 May 2019 (Lukas Pelikan). Flight song of one individual. Background: Greylag Goose Anser anser and singing Savi’s Warbler Locustella luscinioides.

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)

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e) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Bugyi, Pest County, Hungary, 22:39, 8 May 2019. Series of mau-wau, clearly moving from left to right. 190508.MR.223952.02

f) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Castelo Branco, Rosmaninhal, Portugal, 22:55, 30 May 2011. Two mau-wau with strong emphasis on the second syllable. 110530.MR.225532.23

g) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Harz National Park, Germany, 00:06, 1 June 2017 (Lukas Pelikan). Night-flying individual over vast spruce forests, well away from any breeding habitat.

 h) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Friedländer Große Wiese, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, 02:46, 19 June 2019 (Lukas Pelikan). Single mau-wau. Background: Common Grasshopper Warbler Locustella naevia and dogs.

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

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i) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Kirchmöser, Brandenburg, Germany, 02:51, 15 June 2018 (Lukas Pelikan). Nocturnal migrant with wet-mau-wau. You can hear very fast wingbeats after the first series, which presumably belong to this individual.

j) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Harz National Park, Germany, 00:32, 19 July 2017 (Lukas Pelikan). Night-flying bird over vast spruce forests. Variant wet-my-wau. The variant shown is at 3.2s into the recording.

k) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Polgar, Hajdú-Bihar County, Hungary, 23:44, 10 May 2019. Includes one intermediate wet-mau-wau at 2.4s. Background: concert of European Tree Frogs Hyla arborea and European Fire-bellied Toads Bombina bombina. 190510.MR.234427.02

l) Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Potsdam, Germany, 01:32, 29 May 2017 (Steve Klasan). Snippet of recording a) above with mau-lips variant. The whipped first syllable (‘my’ of wet-my-lips) is overlapping with the syllable mau.

Similar NFCs

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.

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Japanese Quail Coturnix japonica Potsdam, Germany, 14:25, 14 June 2017 (Lukas Pelikan). Two songs of a caged male in a neighbouring backyard. These songs were also heard at night, probably from the same individual. Background: singing Common Blackbird Turdus merula.

mau-wau

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

Where and when?

  • 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

Common Quail Coturnix coturnix Maximum estimates of calling individuals per night: low, medium and high activity. See introduction for a full explanation.

Note of caution

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.

Literature

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.

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