BIRDS IN THE CORN 
TV It ORE than one of our summer visitors, 
J.V Alike 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 hi 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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