on ihe British Rails.



245



of the most familiar sounds during the spring in the fields, and

the principal difficulty one labours under is that of locating the

bird ; first of all it sounds as though the call was only six or

eight yards away, in a moment or two it sounds as if it were

made at a distance of a hundred or more yards away ; at one

time it seems as though the bird were on the right, next it sounds

as if it had suddenly got to the left of the listener, so that it is

not by any means an easy bird to get a glimpse of. The call of

the Corn Crake has a somewhat different sound when the bird is

kept in an aviary, and is more like the “quacking” of a young

duck than the sound which is heard in the open fields.


The Corn Crake or Land Rail ( Crex crex ), or Quaker Hen

as it is sometimes called, is the commonest of the four species

that have undoubted British rank, the others being the Spotted

Crake ( Porzana porzana), the Tittle Crake ( Zapornica parva ) and

Baillon’s Crake ( Porzana intermedia?), all these three are uncom¬

mon, the last two extremely so. The Corn Crake is widely

-distributed from May until the end of September throughout

Great Britain, and may be found in almost any meadow which is

left for hay. I have written “found” but it would be better to

say “ heard,” for it is by no means an easy bird to find even when

heard, especially if the lien has begun to lay. I have kept close

observation in a hay field day after day without finding where

the birds were, (I had been asked not to walk over the growing

crop), for of all the sly skulking birds the Rails are the cleverest,

tliey seem to be able to sneak through the growing hay'' without

appearing to disturb a stem ; and then it was a farm hand who

found the nest and hen during the mowing. The field was one

of the first to be mown and the young when found with the hen

•could not have been hatched very long ; five were caught, the

rest with the hen escaping. The colour of the down of these

little mites was bluish- or ashy-black, not, as I had read and ex¬

pected, quite black. It was some few hours before I could get

-down to the farm and they were pretty hungry when I arrived;

but in spite of all my endeavours they refused to take the ants’

•eggs and egg yolk I prepared and, as it was dark, 110 live insects

could be got. At four the next morning when I looked at the

open box in which they had been put with some hay, three were



