CHAP, xvin.] LANDRAIL- CUCKOO. 145 



sounds as if it was produced by some brazen instrument. I 

 never could ascertain whether this cry is made by the male or 

 female bird, or by both in common : I am inclined to suppose the 

 latter is the case, as in endeavouring to make this out I have 

 watched carefully a small piece of grass and shot four landrails 

 in it in as many minutes, every bird in the act of croaking. 

 Two of them were larger and of a redder plumage than the 

 others, and were apparently cock birds : this inclines me to think 

 that the croaking cry is common to both sexes. Their manner 

 of leaving the country is a mystery. Having hatched their 

 young, they take to the high corn-fields, and we never see them 

 again, excepting by chance one comes across a brood at dawn of 

 day, hunting along a path or ditch side for snails,, worms, and 

 flies, which are their only food, this bird being entirely insec- 

 tivorous, never eating corn or seeds. By the time the corn is 

 cut they are all gone ; how they go, or whither, I know not, but 

 with the exception of a stray one or two I never see them in 

 the shooting-season, although the fields are literally alive with 

 them in the breeding-time. You can seldom flush a landrail 

 twice ; having alighted he runs off at a quick pace, and turning 

 and doubling round a dog, will not rise. I have caught them 

 more than once when they have pitched by chance in an open 

 wood, and run into a hole or elsewhere at the root of a tree ; they 

 sometimes hide their head, like the story of the ostrich, and allow 

 themselves to be lifted up. Unlike most other migrating birds, 

 the landrail is in good order on his first arrival, and being then 

 very fat and delicate in flavour, is very good eating. Their 

 nest is of a very artless description, a mere hollow scratched in 

 the middle of a grass field, in which they lay about eight eggs. 

 The young ones at first are quite black, curious-looking little 

 birds, with the same attitudes and manner of running as their 

 parents, stooping their heads and looking more like mice or rats 

 than a long-legged bird. 



Besides those already mentioned, I can only call to mind two 

 other birds that visit us for the breeding-season the cuckoo and 

 the nightjar. 



The cuckoo, like the landrail, is connected in all my ideas with 

 spring and sunshine, though frequenting such a different descrip- 

 tion of country ; the landrail always inhabiting the most open 



