I travelled with a quail for a few months.
Farm-raised from a poultry market. Aside from the whole, you have a fucking quail you wingnut, treatment, the bird was actually pretty cute. I fed it dove-pigeon-quail blend seed and caught it grubs and let it peck ants and stuff. Carried it everywhere, even on twenty-two mile hikes, in a bok choi box with a hydraulic strap through it, changing the lining daily with fresh free newspapers. When we stopped somewhere it'd dust bathe and sometimes take a little bath in the dog's waterbowl (the dog adored it) and drank water from a stupid little hamster dish.
During hitchhiking, if I couldn't tuck the box in the back of somewhere, the box was collapseable, and I had lots of big paper bags with holes poked in them to take the quail in the car with me. Otherwise, it'd sit wrapped in my hoodie and walked around dumb and placid and never really ran/flew away (too dumb to know anybetter I guess)
One day I ran to get some spam and tortilla from the store while the quail was dustbathing in an empty flower bed. I told husband, hey, watch the quail while I run okay? The dog was chilling, he was sewing, on the phone, etc.
When I came back, he's up looking around telling me the quail has walked away, and right at that moment I see a freakin' hawk swoop out of the sky and snatch up a little quail-sized... quail, and the last I ever saw of my quail were his little chicken-feet poking out of a hawk's talons.
My quail went back to Eywa.
wow that was a long story.