Short answers, pulled from the story.
The common quail (Coturnix coturnix) is a small ground-nesting game bird in the pheasant family Phasianidae. It breeds across the western Palearctic, from Europe and northwest Africa east through Mongolia and northern India, and winters in Africa and southern India.
The common quail hides in crops, is reluctant to fly, and prefers to creep away when disturbed. Even when flushed into the air it stays low and drops back into cover quickly. The only reliable sign of its presence is the male's repetitive "wet-my-lips" call, heard mainly in mornings, evenings, and sometimes at night.
Coturnism is an illness caused by eating the flesh of common quails that have consumed certain toxic plants. It is characterised by muscle soreness and can lead to kidney failure. One in four people who consume poisonous quail flesh becomes ill; the specific plants responsible remain a matter of scientific debate.
Carl Linnaeus formally described the common quail in 1758, in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae, under the binomial name Tetrao coturnix. The genus Coturnix, into which the species was later moved, was introduced in 1764 by French naturalist Francois Alexandre Pierre de Garsault.
During the autumn migration of 2012, an estimated 3.4 million common quails were caught in nets in northern Sinai alone. For the whole of Egypt that same season, the estimated total reached as high as 12.9 million birds.
In 1537, Queen Jane Seymour, pregnant with the future King Edward VI, developed an insatiable craving for quail. The craving was strong enough that Henry VIII ordered courtiers and diplomats abroad to find sufficient supplies for her.