103 



rapidly from side to side as the craking is being produced. But I 

 have also seen it call whilst walking, which it does very demurely, 

 lifting its feet high, and bending its head and tail in rather a 

 comical fashion ; its strut reminds me very much of the precise 

 and prim walk which the waterhen assumes at times. Often when 

 returning from angling, in the grey dawn of the morning, have I 

 heard their " crake-crake, crake-crake," resounding in the meadows 

 I was passing through, intermingling with the matin hymns of our 

 early rising songsters. It also cries in the still hours of the night ; 

 but the familiar call ceases after the period of incubation. 



I have known the Corncrake, more than once, cut in two by 

 the mowers. The bird squats so low in the grass, and remains so 

 still, that its whereabouts was not discovered until the sharp scythe 

 had stopped its cry for ever. There is not the least doubt that 

 numbers of this bird are destroyed every year, especially since the 

 introduction of the mowing machine, which cuts the grass so close, 

 and just at the time the birds are sitting; it is a miracle that there 

 are any left at all. When hay-cutting was principally done by 

 hand, instances have come to my knowledge where the mowers, 

 having got a glimpse of the bird on her nest, left a small portion 

 uncut around where the bird was sitting, so as to allow her to hatch 

 out the chicks. The young run as soon as hatched, and the little 

 black downy fellows are a very pretty sight. An instance of the 

 parental instinct of these birds, I cannot help but record. A few 

 years ago, on the 30th of June, whilst some mowers were cutting a 

 field of grass, they inadvertently cut through the nest of a Corn- 

 crake, the young of which had only just broken through the shell. 

 Three young birds were found to be killed by the scythe ; several 

 others were seen to run away and hide themselves in the long 

 grass. A minute or two after, as the men were re-commencing 

 work, one of the parent birds was seen to rush out towards the 

 nest, and rapidly retreat with something black in its beak towards 

 the high grass on a bank not many feet distant. The curiosity of 

 the men being roused, they immediately searched the place where 

 the old bird was lost to view, and, to their surprise, found one of 

 the young without feet, both having been cut off by the scythe, 



