Thanks for providing a link to the source,
yurifink ! The context makes it somewhat easier to understand the sentence you cited, but alas, it doesn't eliminate (at least for me) all the difficulties when it come to identifying the particular species to which reference is made. The question is, are we taking about partridge
spp or quail
spp here. There are many of both, the main distinction being that
quails are small birds,
partridges medium-sized ones. Both are widely hunted. Which species is (are) being referred to here is not easy to determine, in particular for someone possessing so limited ornithological knowledge as I. But perhaps the text provides us with a hint : if «雏鸡山鹑» is the name of a single species, it would seem to be a rather small one, which would leave me to believe that «quail» would be a better choice than «partridge». Of course, many animals have a plethora of common names, and bi-lingual dictionaries are notoriously unreliable about such matters (for a discussion of this theme, cf, e g,
here). Our only hope if we really wish to know precisely to which animal(s) the sentence refers, is to find an original draught in German, translated the species' names into good Linnean Latin, and then check out the official equivalents in a specialist taxonomic work (presuming one exists !) in Chinese. I don't have the tools to do this work, and besides, as I have said, I'm no ornithologist, which, to avoid error, I think one needs to be in this particular case. Before posting my original reply to your query, I checked the term «山鹑» in the 《汉语大词典》, which, while not a specialist dictionary, must be considered fairly authoritative, but found there no entry. As regards «partridge», I checked the term in the 《英华大辞典》 (修订第二版) from 1985, which provides the following translation : «鹧鸪 ; [美] 松鸡» ; our context makes it clear that here it is not the North American, but the Old World bird that is meant. Again, the 《英华大辞典》 is not a specialist ornithological dictionary, but I am not entirely convinced that the «Kingsoft English Chinese Online» is to be considered more authoritative....
Henri