LANDRAIL OR CORNCRAKE. 331 



GRA LLA TORES. RA LLID^E. 



THE LANDRAIL, OR CORNCRAKE. 



CREX PRATENSIS. 

 Treun-re-Treun. Treunna. 



THERE is, perhaps, no Scottish bird more generally distribute^ 

 than the familiar Corncrake; it is found in every district, culti- 

 vated and uncultivated, on the western mainland, from the Mull 

 of Galloway to Cape Wrath, and also over the whole extent of 

 both groups of islands, and all the rocky islets on the west coast, 

 extending to Heisker rocks, the Monach islands, and St. Kilda. 

 It will, in fact, take up its abode and rear its young on such places 

 as are almost exclusively frequented by birds dependent on the 

 sea for their daily subsistence: all that can be looked upon as an 

 attraction being but an occasional patch of grass, and a moist 

 hollow to remind it of the distant meadow where perchance it had 

 its haunts the previous summer. I have observed it in the un- 

 inhabited islands of the Hebridean seas, and have heard it near 

 the summit of Ailsa Craig rasping its eerie cry after nightfall, as 

 a rude lullaby to the gulls hatching on the grassy verge of a 

 precipice. In such places, as well as on the mainland, I have 

 noticed that the Corncrake utters its cry during the whole of 

 the night, from the time of its arrival until the end of July, with 

 the exception of a three weeks' lull while the first brood is being 

 hatched. There appears to be a second brood about the middle 

 of July. The species usually arrives early in May, and disappears 

 early in September. The latest date which I am able to record 

 for its occurrence, in any part of Scotland, is the 30th October. 

 A specimen, which I saw in the flesh, was shot near Glasgow on 

 that date, in 1867.* 



Many persons imagine that it is a very difficult matter to procure 

 Corncrakes, and strange faculties have been curiously attributed 

 to the species, such as its ventriloquial talents and powers of con- 



* Macgillivray mentions that Corncrakes are sometimes known to winter 

 in this country, and that a case of this kind had been reported to him from 

 Elgin. The late Mr James Wilson of Woodville, also chronicles the finding of 

 a Corncrake in mid-winter, but, with characteristic humour, he qualifies his 

 statement by the admission that the specimen had passed the time in confine^ 

 ment in an Edinburgh garret 



