Starter of quail for instance — and goose (3)
I believe the answer is:
egg
'starter of quail' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both animals as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'for instance and goose' is the wordplay.
'for instance' becomes 'eg' (short for 'exempli gratia', 'for example' in Latin).
'and' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'goose' becomes 'g' (this might be a standard abbreviation which I don't know about).
'eg'+'g'='EGG'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for egg that I've seen before include "Hen's product" , "Food in a shell" , "start in life" , "It comes before or after the chicken?" , "The advertising slogan exhorted us to go to work on one" .)