I wonder whether the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, will eat quail again after the shooting incident in south Texas last month, when he ignored the most basic safety rules in shooting at his intended target while unable to see that an elderly gentleman was in his line of fire. The birds that Mr Cheney was trying to shoot would have been either scaled or bobwhite quail, both species which take to the air only reluctantly, when put up by ‘bird dogs’. They never fly very far or very high, making Mr Cheney’s negligence — he was apparently firing into a low, late-afternoon sun — the more culpable.
No quail are shot in this country, where a summer visitor, coturnix coturnix (common quail), is the only one to be seen in the wild, and only in southern England. I have spotted a pair on the Wiltshire downs, and heard the male’s strange staccato call which, according to my bird book, is a trisyllabic noise approximating to the words ‘wet my lips’. Most of us, though, will have to be content to wet our lips in anticipation of a farmed quail — unless one is lucky enough to be offered a wild bird on some Mediterranean menu.
The birds are very popular in Greece, where they are either shot over pointers or netted, a practice made illegal in England almost a century ago. The Greeks traditionally wrap their quail in vine leaves, perhaps having first rubbed a mixture of honey, lemon, thyme and olive oil into the skin, and roast them in a medium oven for 20–30 minutes. In another Greek recipe, the quail are stuffed with feta cheese and fenugreek before being cooked in the oven with some black olives, pine nuts, crushed juniper berries and breadcrumbs.
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