SPOTTED CRAKE. 393 



The sexes are nearly alike in colour, but the female, 

 according to Gould, "is somewhat smaller than the 

 male, has the grey on the sides of the head less pure, 

 and the usual colour of the wings mixed with darker 

 brown." 



CEEX PORZANA (Linnaeus.) 

 SPOTTED CEAKE. 



The Spotted, like the corn-crake, visits us regularly 

 in spring, and though chiefly confined to the " Broad " 

 and " Fen " Districts, is by no means uncommon 

 between the months of March and October. Con- 

 sidering the almost impenetrable swamps these crakes 

 frequent in summer, the fact of their nests being but 

 seldom found is, of course, no proof of their scarcity, 

 and in like manner, owing to the extreme difficulty with 

 which they are flushed, even on the mown marshes in 

 autumn, the few examples killed yearly by the snipe- 

 shooter at that season are, I consider, an evidence of 

 many passing wholly unnoticed. 



Mr, Lubbock speaks of the spring arrival* of this 

 species as occurring with " great regularity between the 

 12th and 20th of March," but of late years I have no 

 record of their appearance earlier than the 2 1st of that 

 month, and a female killed on the 23rd of March, 1866, 

 at Ludham, was then forward in egg. During the first 

 week in May, as recorded by Mr. W. E. Fisher, in the 

 "Zoologist" for 1843 (p. 248), the eggs of the spotted 

 crakef have been taken in the neighbourhood of Tar- 



* This species has occurred in Greenland according to Professor 

 Eeinhardt "Ibis," 1861, p. 12.) 



f The late Mr. C. S. Girdlestone, of Yarmouth, an authority in 

 such matters, in a letter to Mr. Selby, in 1824 (for a copy of which 

 I am indebted to Mr. A. Newton), on the provincial names of wild 

 3 E 



