In your opinion, can a quail live in a bird room (indoors) and be happy?
Apart from the fact that I have dreamed of having one since I was a kid, I read somewhere that they are very quick at picking up the food other birds throw on the floor. If they really are that good, I would have the best excuse to buy one: she'd help me to keep the ants away!
Also do you need to have more than one or they are happy on their own and mixing with the flock?

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Button quail can be kept indoors. Here's a brief article about them: http://soaringwingsaviary.webs.com/buttonquail.htm

Our local bird mart was yesterday, and the guy who sells quail (several species) did a good business. He sold several of them to another vendor before we even opened to the public.

Yes. At The Bird Shop, in the budgie, canary, tiel and finch aviaries, there are button quail pecking around on the floor. They are very nice. One of the aviary tiels came down to forage with it and they walked together. Sometimes the tiel poked the quail with his beak and the quail was very patient and didn't even react. So if you have a naughty troublemaker in the flock, a quail would not be bothered.

Great news, thank you! I will do some research and definitely get one or two.
Do they all have this weird feather on the top of their head? I don't remember seeing it in the quails I wanted. They were normal brown, cute and round.
This is the picture of the feather
http://m.birdtrader.co.uk/california-qu ... rds/419326


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No, it's just certain wild quail species that have the topknot. My back yard is full of Gambel quail, which is related to the California quail but is even handsomer:

We can't have California quail in gardens or as pets. They are our state bird. We only have button quail for sale at my bird store, but they are adorable.

In the US you can't legally possess native birds, so no native quail for us! We can look but we can't touch. Non-native (exotic) birds are OK as long as they weren't smuggled in, but it's technically illegal to have even a feather from a native bird. But our native birds are exotics in other countries so it's OK for people to have them in these places as long as they weren't smuggled in. Once upon a time it was legal to export native birds but not any more.

Oh my, that's a stunning bird! I had no idea there were so many types and so beautiful.



What a little puff! so pretty, I read that they are timid animals but surely this owner did a wonderful job.
And they are not as small as I thought.

Lots of aviaries in this county have Quails in them as they are a bottom of the cage feeder...
I know a good few breeders who keep them in with their birds and on their own...

Here they are! They are a couple of Japanese Quails, the boy is the smaller one.

First picture below, they had just arrived




Here, they are examining some interesting stuff on the floor




Bubu's reaction at seeing them for the first time was priceless, will post the video as soon as it's done uploading; everyone else basically think they are quails too and hang out on the floor all the time, especially sesamo who really likes them and follows them everywhere

I haven't seen one ant since their arrival