116 SUMMER BIRDS 



astonishing phenomena in bird life. On the rare 

 occasions when one sees this bird on the wing it seems 

 able to do hardly more than flit feebly with drooping 

 legs to the nearest hedge, where it drops suddenly as if 

 in the last stage of exhaustion. Yet there is no bolder 

 or more inveterate traveller. The corncrakes which 

 nest and summer in the British Isles betake themselves 

 before winter to Africa, Asia Minor, or some part of the 

 Mediterranean region, never venturing back to our 

 storm-swept coasts till quite the end of April or the 

 beginning of May, when they may expect to find grass 

 deep enough to hide in. The seasonal movements of the 

 quail have always been closely watched by dwellers 

 around the Mediterranean, because of their importance 

 for food, and Pliny states that the arrival of the quails 

 was always preceded by the corncrakes, whence the 

 Greek name for it oprvyo^Tpa, the quail-leader. 1 



The corncrake far outstrips the quail in its range of 

 migration. Starting in spring from, say, Central and 

 Northern Africa, it wings its way to all parts of 

 temperate Europe and Asia, and even to Iceland, which 

 last involves a flight of at least 500 miles across the 

 stormy North Atlantic. Nor is that the limit of its 

 powers, for corncrakes have been found in Greenland, 

 the Eastern United States, and Bermuda. Such feats 

 by a creature apparently so feeble and so ill-adapted for 

 sustained flight would be deemed incredible were it 

 not as certain as any fact in ornithology that no 

 corncrakes remain in these lands during the winter. 

 Lieut. F. S. Beveridge reports from the Outer Hebrides 



1 Plinii, Nat. Hist., part i. book x. chap. 23. 



