De kwartel Coturnix coturnix als slachtoffer van een lokroep uit de zee

Quails used to be lured by a whistle made of bones of birds (turkey, heron, stork, goose, cock) or mammals (cat, dog, goat, hare). A painting by Pieter van den Bosch (c. 1613- after 1660) shows two quail whistles (Figure 1). The strange form of the left one was puzzling. The answer was given in a book on bird catching in the western Netherlands (Matthey 2002). In a letter (1659) from the Dutch barrister-at-law Adriaen van der Goes, living in The Hague, to his brother a quail whistle is mentioned made from the claw of a Lobster Homarus gummarus. And that is exactly what the painting of Pieter van den Bosch shows.