BIRDS IN THE CORN 



MORE than one of our summer visitors, 

 like the nightingale and cuckoo, are 

 less often seen than heard, but certainly the 

 most secretive hider of them all is the landrail. 

 This harsh-voiced bird reaches our shores in 

 May, and it was on the last of that month that 

 I lately heard its rasping note in a quiet park 

 not a mile out of a busy market town on the 

 Welsh border, and forgave its monotone be- 

 cause, more emphatically than even the 

 cuckoo's dissyllable, it announced that, 

 at last, " summer was icumen in." This 

 feeble-looking but indomitable traveller is 

 closely associated during its visit with the 

 resident partridge. They nest in the same 

 situations, hiding in the fields of grass and 

 standing corn, and eventually being flushed in 

 company by September guns walking abreast 

 through the clover-bud. Sport is not the theme 

 of these notes, and it will therefore suffice to 

 remark in passing on the curious manner in 

 which even good shots, accustomed to bring 

 down partridges with some approach to 

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