194 Crakes in the Mowing-grass. 



time when it has grown sufficiently high and thick 

 to hide their motions. This desire of concealment 

 to be out of sight is apparently more strongl}- 

 marked in them than in any other bird ; yet they 

 utter their loud call of ' Crake, crake, crake ! ' not 

 unlike the turning of a wooden rattle, continuously 

 though only at a short distance. 



It is difficult to tell from what place the cry pro- 

 ceeds : at one moment it sounds almost close at 

 hand, the next fifty yards off; then, after a brief 

 silence, a long wa}* to one side or the other. The 

 attempt to mark the spot is in vain ; you think you 

 have it, and rush there, but nothing is to be seen, 

 and a minute afterwards ' Crake, crake ' comes be- 

 hind you. For the first two or three such attempts 

 the crake seems to move but a little way, dodging to 

 and fro in a zigzag, so that his call is never very far 

 off ; but if repeated again and again he gets alarmed, 

 there is a silence, and presently you hear him in a 

 corner of the mead a hundred yards distant. Per- 

 haps once, if you steal up very, very quietly, and 

 suddenly dart forward, or if you have been waiting 

 till he has come unawares close to you, you may 

 possibly see the grass move as if something passed 

 through it; but in a moment he is gone, without 

 a glimpse of his body having been seen. His speed 

 must be very great to slip like this from one side of 

 the field to the other in so few seconds. 



The fact that the call apparently issues from the 

 grass in one place, and yet upon reaching it the bird 

 is not to be found, has given rise to the belief that 

 the crake is a ventriloquist. It may be so ; but 

 even without special powers of that kind, ventrilo- 



