108 INDIAN SPORTING BIRDS 



Little Crake. 



Porzana parva. 



The little crake is a short-billed and long-toed little bird 

 about as big as a lark, with streaky brown rather lark-like 

 plumage, slightly variegated with white above, and grey below 

 on the old cock, while the under-parts of hens and young birds 

 are buff, shading into brown behind, where the plumage is 

 diversified with white cross-bars in all. Young birds are more 

 freely barred, and show more white on the upper-parts. 



The little crake is the smallest of our rails except the next 

 species, but is a comparatively bold bird, being found running 

 on water-lily leaves and swimming in the water between 

 them ; it also appears to dive quite freely, and is altogether more 

 of a water-bird and less of a swamp-runner than most rails. It 

 is also a pretty good flyer as rails go, and is only a winter visitor 

 to India, and then only to the extreme North-west, its chosen 

 haunts being the broads in Sind, where it feeds on water-insects. 



This, like the spotted crake, is a well-known bird in Europe, 

 and does not extend farther than Central Asia to the eastward. 



Eastern Baillon's Crake. 



* Porzana pusilla. Jhilli, Nepalese. 



This little bird is even smaller than the little crake, but 

 closely resembles it, having a black-streaked, white-splashed 

 upper-surface and under-parts grey in front and with white 

 cross-bars behind; but in the present, bird the cock and hen 

 are alike, and it is only the young which differ in having the 

 breast and throat bufdsh instead of grey. But the easiest way 

 to distinguish these two tiny crakes, or pigmy moorhens as they 

 might be called, from their habits, is to remember that in the 

 Eastern Baillon's crake the first wing-quill has a white edge* 

 whereas in the little crake this is not the case. 



This Eastern race of Baillon's crake of Europe, the original 

 Porzana hailloni, has a dark-brown streak along the face which is 



* Crex hailloni on plate. 



