RALLID.«. 



513 



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BAILLON'S CRAKE. 



PORZANA BAILLONI (Vieillot). 



This species (named after the distinguished naturaHst of Abbeville), 

 though rather more irregular in its visits to England than the Little 

 Crake, is also generally observed in spring and autumn ; but two 

 nests with eggs, believed to belong to Baillon's Crake, were found 

 in Cambridgeshire in June and August 1858, while two more were 

 taken near Hickling in Norfolk in June and July 1866. There 

 is no evidence that the bird is a resident, though an example is said 

 to have been captured on some ice near Cambridge in January 1823, 

 Besides Norfolk, in which about ten specimens have been obtained, 

 Baillon's Crake has occurred in Suffolk, Derbyshire, Nottingham- 

 shire, Hertfordshire, Dorset, Somerset, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Lanca- 

 shire, the Isle of Man, and Cumberland. In Scotland one was 

 recorded by Jardine from Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, in 1842 ; 

 another (in the Sinclair collection at Thurso) was probably killed in 

 Sutherland in 1841 ; one struck a telegraph wire in Renfrewshire 

 in May 1893; and one is said to have been killed at Stranraer in 

 1 89 1. In Ireland only two authenticated instances are known, 

 both of them from the south. 



It is not surprising that Baillon's Crake should occasionally nest 

 with us, for it breeds annually in some parts of Holland, and 



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