BAILTONS CRAKE. 81 
up, only flies a short distance. is can, however, make more 
prolonged flights with comparative ease. It swims well, and 
can dive, if need be for it to do so, keeping, when still, the 
point of the bill only above the water. 
Its food is made of water-insects and their larve, slugs, 
spiders, and beetles, as also of the seeds and leaves of plants. 
The note is reported as an almost indescribable sort of low 
whistle. 
The, nest of this Crake is made near the water’s edge, in 
the moist situations which the bird itself frequents, among 
long grass, flags, or rushes, and is very difficult to find. Its 
component parts are the stems and leaves of water-plants, 
sedge, and grasses. 
The eggs are seven or eight to ten in number, and of a 
regular oval form. Their colour is greyish white, spotted 
with yellowish brown. The hen bird is said, on leaving them, 
to add to the nest the concealment of the surrounding and 
overhanging herbage. 
Male; length, from five inches and a half to six and a 
half—Sir William Jardine says that his Scotch specimen 
measured only four inches in length at the most; bill, dark 
olive green. Iris, reddish brown; head in front and on the 
sides, bluish slate-colour; on the crown, the centres of the 
feathers being darker, the neck on the back and nape, yellowish 
brown; chin and throat, grey; breast, bluish slate-colour, with 
bars of black and white on the sides; back, yellowish brown, 
with a tinge of olive green, with round and triangular-shaped 
white spots, surrounded with black, and some of them with 
black centres in addition, forming a list extending downwards. 
Greater and lesser wing coverts, yellowish brown with a 
tint of dull green, and varied with white spots and streaks, 
barred or edged with black; primaries, dusky brown; the outer 
edge of the first quill feather is white; secondaries, with 
zigzag white lines bordered with black; tertiaries, yellowish 
brown with a tinge of dull green, and spotted or streaked 
irregularly with white, with edgings or bars of black. The 
tail has the middle feathers dusky brown; under tail coverts, 
unevenly barred with greyish white and dull black. Legs 
and toes, pale yellowish or olive green reddish brown. 
The female is like the male, but her colouring is paler. 
In the young the throat and breast on the middle part 
are white, with uneven bars of brown. The sides olive with 
spots of white. The back has fewer of the white spots. 
VOL, VI. G 
