576 THE RAILS 



shores till May. Additional evidence as to its nesting in several 

 counties also came to hand, but it is only fair to state that there are 

 many counties in which the conditions are apparently suitable and 

 yet no nest has ever been recorded ; while, on the other hand, with 

 regard to the statement that it frequently " remains during the whole 

 winter," an analysis of the records referred to shows that although 

 occasionally met with up to the end of the year, it is only very rarely 

 that it has been met with in January, and apparently hardly ever in 

 February. It appears, therefore, quite possible that in mild winters 

 it may attempt to stay with us, as the corncrake also does ; but 

 probably the birds which do so are those which have been hatched 

 late in the season. Thus Mr. Stevenson noticed that the birds which 

 were brought to him late in the year were almost invariably in 

 immature plumage. One shown to him in the flesh on December 

 2, 1868, was the latest occurrence of which he was aware. No doubt 

 if hard weather had set in such birds would either perish or be forced 

 to migrate, though they might well survive if the weather continued 

 to be mild. 



The few birds which still visit us to breed arrive about the middle 

 of March, and probably first reach our southern coasts, but the 

 records are so scanty that our information is most imperfect. At the 

 present time the most likely breeding-places are the south coast 

 counties, such as Cornwall, where it is last recorded as breeding in 

 1874 ; Wiltshire (where it bred in 1881), Hampshire (young in 1872 and 

 1881), etc. In East Anglia it formerly nested in some numbers, but of 

 late records have been very few, though Mr. G. T. Rope found a nest 

 in East Suffolk in 1872. Mr. E. T. Booth saw a flooded nest with eggs 

 in 1873, and the Rev. M. C. H. Bird mentions a brood of young 

 hatched in Norfolk in 1889. It must at one time have been very 

 abundant in the Whittlesea and Yaxley fens, for in 1843 John 

 Hancock paid a visit to this district and found the nests and eggs 

 along the reed-grown shores of the mere in great numbers, almost 

 equalling those of the water-rail, which was then very plentiful. In 



