Bog Myrtle & Peat

I heard a quail calling from the fields at the head of a Galloway glen. Back in July, I wrote about my encounter on this blog, marking the moment as a first for me. Given that Scotland lies on the outermost limits of a quail’s migratory range, these birds occupy an obscure position in local consciousness. A handful come in summer time, but they’re rarely acknowledged here. I gather that another quail was heard calling near Dumfries, and several were seen in the Borders at Kelso in June. But if these birds are oddly unpredictable in Scotland, their true heartlands lie in the east, not just in the cerealised steppe of Ukraine and the Caucasus, but deep into the heart of Central Asia. 

In Uzbekistan, quail are a universal fact-of-life. Called ‘bedana’, the birds are not only common but abundant in the agricultural land which lies between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. Boiled quail eggs are a standard garnish on plov, the oily, delicious pilaf which is regarded as the Uzbek national dish. In a restaurant in downtown Tashkent, diners eat quail eggs to the sound of real quail calling; the little birds are kept in cages suspended from the ceiling, and their distinctive cries add to the atmosphere and the swirling smell of slow-cooked garlic. Their neatly home-made cages are covered with fabric – the birds call from a half-dark platform which feels constrained and short sighted. But when I lifted the edge of a cloth to see the bird inside, it exploded into panic and almost injured itself. It must have been the shock, because later in the streets of Samarkand, a number of quail were being offered for sale as pets or pals in an obviously too-small crate. They were simply milling around in a state of passive confusion, oblivious to the gawking eyes of passing children. Elsewhere in the same pile of cages, washed-out, pallid hedgehogs were being sold alongside parrots, budgies and lovebirds. And if I was trying to find threads of sense and continuity in this display of pets-for-sale, the logic was lost in a punnet of day-old-chicks which had been dyed rose-pink and rich cerulean blue for the sake of novelty and fun. 

The call of a quail is something like three snappy exclamations in quick succession. The old description is “wet my lips… wet my lips”, and as songbirds, there’s little of the lilt or bounce you’d expect to hear in the melody of more famous finches. Canaries and linnets are also kept in tiny wire cages across Central Asia, but the quail’s harder, more perfunctory cry is every bit as evocative and true. As Uzbekistan has rushed towards urban modernity, quail-song seems to have been carried into the towns as a reminder of the good old days. Suspended from the air-conditioned ceiling of restaurants and cafes, the birds tell of a time when life and landscape were more closely intertwined.