SPOTTED CRAKE. 393 
The sexes are nearly alike in colour, but the female, 
according to Gould, “is somewhat smaller than the 
male, has the grey on the sides of the head less pure, 
and the usual colour of the wings mixed with darker 
brown.” 
CREX PORZANA (lLinneus.) 
SPOTTED CRAKE. 
The Spotted, like the corn-crake, visits us regularly 
in spring, and though chiefly confined to the “ Broad” 
and “Fen” Districts, is by no means uncommon 
between the months of March and October. Con- 
sidering the almost impenetrable swamps these crakes 
frequent in summer, the fact of their nests being but 
seldom found is, of course, no proof of their scarcity, 
and in like manner, owing to the extreme difficulty with 
which they are flushed, even on the mown marshes in 
autumn, the few examples killed yearly by the snipe- 
shooter at that season are, I consider, an evidence of 
many passing wholly unnoticed. 
Mr. Lubbock speaks of the spring arrival* of this 
species as occurring with “great regularity between the 
12th and 20th of March,” but of late years I have no 
record of their appearance earlier than the 21st of that 
month, and a female killed on the 25rd of March, 1866, 
at Ludham, was then forward in egg. During the first 
week in May, as recorded by Mr. W. R. Fisher, in the 
“ Zoologist”’ for 1843 (p. 248), the eggs of the spotted 
crake+ have been taken in the neighbourhood of Yar- 
* This species has occurred in Greenland according to Professor 
Reinhardt “ Ibis,” 1861, p. 12.) 
+ The late Mr. C. S. Girdlestone, of Yarmouth, an authority in 
such matters, in a letter to Mr. Selby, in 1824 (for a copy of which 
I am indebted to Mr. A. Newton), on the provincial names of wild 
3 :E 
