534 

 CORN CRAKE OR LAND RAIL. 



Crex pratensis (Bechstein). 



Summer visitant, generally distributed ; common, except 

 manufacturing districts. 



The first published reference to the Corn Crake appears- 

 to be in Graves's " History of Cleveland " (1808), where it 

 is enumerated amongst the migratory birds. 



Thomas Allis, in 1844, wrote : 



Crex pratensis. Corn Crake R. Leyland says " The peculiar note 

 of the Land Rail is now seldom heard with us ; incessant persecution 

 of bird-stuff ers and others having nearly exterminated them." The 

 bird is not named in my accounts from Barnsley, Huddersfield, and 

 Hebden Bridge ; near York it is certainly less abundant than formerly ; 

 it is frequently met with near Leeds, Sheffield, and Doncaster. 



Although probably less abundant than formerly, the Land 

 Rail, or Corn Crake as it is more frequently termed, is not 

 the " rara avis " that Allis's remarks would lead us to infer. 

 A summer migrant, it arrives about the end of April or early 

 in May ; the earliest reported date of which I am cognizant 

 is I5th April 1869, the recorder being the late Thomas Lister 

 of Barnsley. 



Its departure usually takes place in September or early 

 October, though numerous instances are chronicled of in- 

 dividuals being noticed in November, and even in December ; 

 one was announced to have occurred on the 24th of the latter 

 month at Healaugh, near Tadcaster (Nat. 1885, p. 149). 

 This bird has been recorded amongst the casualities at the- 

 Spurn Lighthouse ; individuals have been killed during 

 both the spring and autumn migrations, and one was shot 

 on the Redcar " scars " in the first week of November 1906.. 



The Corn Crake is fairly generally distributed in the 

 agricultural districts, resorting chiefly to meadows, clover- 

 fields, and young corn, being numerous in some seasons 

 and unaccountably scarce in others. J. J. Briggs, writing 

 to the Zoologist (1845, p. 820), stated that six or seven might 



