Migration routes and season may affect quail risk. Quail are never poisonous outside the migration season nor are the vast majority poisonous while migrating. European common quail migrate along three different flyways, each with different poisoning characteristics, at least in 20th-century records. The western flyway across Algeria to France is associated with poisonings only on the spring migration and not on the autumn return. The eastern flyway, which funnels down the Nile Valley, is the reverse. Poisonings were only reported in the autumn migration before the quail had crossed the Mediterranean. The central flyway across Italy had no associated poisonings. Migrating quail used to be caught and eaten in prodigious numbers (150,000 quail exported from Capri in 1850) but modern farming and droughts in the Sahel have led to a vast reduction in the size of the migrations. Conservation efforts and the availability of farmed quail have also reduced the consumption of these wild birds.
Coturnism
Crepitus
Oral galvanism
Pruritus ani
Varicose veins
Petechia
Wrinkly skin syndrome
Orthostatic purpura