154 British Birds, 



it on all sides of me, at all hours, I may say, of both 

 day and night. For two or three years in succession 

 a pair took possession of a small plantation of young 

 fir trees bordering my garden lawn on the north, and 

 only separated from it by a deep ditch with a run of 

 water at the bottom. Long after the union seemed to 

 have been formed the peculiar note was kept up, and 

 I used to see both birds within a few feet of each 

 other during its continuance. Scarcely a day passed 

 during their sojourn of eight or ten. days in and about 

 the plantation but excursions were taken into the 

 garden, frequently extending to the terrace beneath 

 my dining-room window, where sundry very inquir- 

 ing and interested glances — not to say stares — were 

 exchanged between the visitors and myself and divers 

 members of my family. The visitors seemed very 

 little disturbed at our notice as long as we remained 

 quite still and silent, but any movement on our part 

 led to immediate retreat on the Corn Crakes. Its 

 movements were desultory or in jerks, so to speak. 

 The bird would run ten or tw^elve paces in an attitude 

 and with a speed which left one in doubt for a moment 

 whether it were not some small quadruped Then it 

 would skulk amid taller herbage, or under the shrubs 

 of a raised bed, in beneath a rhododendron bush. A 

 minute after it would be seen with its head and whole 

 body erect, and the neck so out-stretched that if the 

 bird had been hung up by its head it could not have 

 been much more elongated. This was the invariable 

 position or attitude assumed when interchanging 

 looks with the occupants of the windo\v. My own 

 impression was that these journeys or excursions 



