CHAPTER EIGHTEEN SPRING BIRDS 



grass and shot four landrails initio as many minutes, every 

 bird in the act of croaking. Two of them were larger and 

 of a redder plumage than the others, and were apparently 

 cock birds: this inclines me to think that the croakingcryis 

 common to both sexes. Their manner of leaving the coun- 

 try is a mystery. Having hatched their young, they take to 

 the high corn-fields, and we never see them again, except- 

 ing by chance onecomesacrossabroodatdawnof day, hunt- 

 ing along a path or ditch side for snails, worms, and flies, 

 which are their only food, this bird beingentirelyinsectivor- 

 ous, never eating corn or seeds. By the time the corn is cut 

 they are all gone ; how they go, or whither, I know not, but 

 with the exception of a stray one or two I never see them in 

 the shooting-season, although the fields are literally alive 

 with them in the breeding-time. You can seldom flush a land- 

 rail twice; having alighted he runs off at a quick pace, and 

 turning and doubling round adog, will not rise. I have caught 

 them more than once when they have pitched by chance in 

 an open wood, and run into a hole or elsewhere at the root 

 ofatree; they sometimes hide their head, like the storyofthe 

 ostrich, and allow themselves to be lifted up. Unlike most 

 other migrating birds, the landrail is in good order on his 

 first arrival, and being then very fat and delicate in flavour, 

 is very good eating. Their nest is of a very artless descrip- 

 tion, a mere hollow scratched in the middle of a grass field, 

 in which they lay about eight eggs. The young ones at first 

 are quite black, curious-looking little birds, with the same 

 attitudes and manner of running as their parents, stooping 

 their heads and looking more like mice or rats than a long- 

 legged bird 



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