Rare summer visitor.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century Quail were common as breeding birds in Hertfordshire. In 1902 Marlborough H. Pryor recorded that up to fifteen years previously Quail used to nest in the neighbourhood of Stevenage but were by then practically extinct in the area. Their decline nationally has been linked to agricultural changes in Britain and the large numbers killed on migration in the Mediterranean.

One was shot at Aston End on 19 September 1893.

The other records are: one heard calling from rough ground reserved for building near Martins Wood on 5 July 1967; one calling at Aston on 7 June 1970; one heard calling as it flew over an unrecorded location at 2.30am on 25 July 1976; one heard calling at Bragbury End in June and early July 1989; a pair heard calling and seen near Norton Green on 30 and 31 May 1994; one heard calling west of Stevenage on the evening of 27 May 2003; one heard calling at Chells Green on 22 May 2004. (Chells Green was formerly a group of isolated cottages but is now the site of a telecommunications mast in farmland to the east of Chells Manor).