394 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
mouth, and I have had fresh eggs from Hickling on the 
26th of that month, and have seen the young, in their 
black down, taken on Rockland Broad, in the last week 
of July. With reference also to its breeding in Norfolk, 
Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear remark, “We have seen 
a considerable number of its eggs at Yarmouth, which, 
as well as its young, were found in the neighbourhood 
of that place, and are also in possession of an egg taken 
from a female of this species, which was killed in the 
marshes below Norwich.” It seems probable, however, 
that they were formerly more abundant in this county 
than they are now, as Mr. Rising informs me he has 
killed seven or eight in a day at Horsey, where they 
are comparatively scarce at the present time.* A few 
years back a nest of this crake was found by Mr. A. 
Hamond, jun., on the margin of a reed-bed on Walton 
Common, near Westacre; and the small cham of fens 
on the river Thet, in the south-western part of the 
county, is also frequented by this species. 
On two or three occasions I have shot this crake 
when looking for snipe at Surlingham, where both young 
and old, before their departure in October, frequent the 
rough marshes surrounding the reed-beds; but in these 
localities even a dog well accustomed to this sport 
will some times be baffled altogether by the quickness 
with which the bird threads its way amongst the 
tangled grasses, or slips round the little tussocks. When 
too closely pressed, also, and compelled to take wing, it 
not unfrequently flies so low, in a line with the dog, that 
fowl and other birds in Norfolk, remarks, ‘‘The common water- 
rails are here called rails, but the spotted rails are called quails.” 
In the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Fens, as Mr. Newton 
informs me, spotted rails used to be known as “ dotterel.” 
* Mr. A. Newton tells me that the last nest he has heard of, 
near Whittlesey Mere, where the species used to abound formerly, 
was in 1849. 
