Ireland I have more than once seen one or two of these 
birds running about unconcernedly on the highroads, 
and frequently noticed them perched or running on the 
tops of stone walls. The favourite summer haunts of 
the Corn-Crake are water-meadows, where they find an 
abundance of their favourite diet—slugs, small snails, 
and worms and insects, and good concealment for their 
nests, which are very simple constructions of dry grasses. 
The eggs, of which I consider nine as the average com- 
plement, are of a creamy white, thickly spotted and 
blotched with rust-colour and grey. As soon as the 
meadow-grass is mown the Corn-Crakes resort to over- 
grown ditch-sides and fields of standing corn or clover ; 
this last-named crop is at all times a usual resort, and 
the ease and rapidity with which these birds glide and 
double amongst the stems of a dense second crop of 
clover must be seen to be believed. Although when 
forced to take wing the Corn-Crake flies slowly with 
hanging legs and soon drops again, the bird is capable 
of swift and long-sustained flight ; it is also possessed of 
considerable climbing power. 
In Northamptonshire, although our meadows are 
generally alive with these birds in the summer, it is 
very seldom that our total bag of them in the Partridge 
shooting-season reaches to more than ten or twelve, 
though they usually remain with us throughout Sep- 
tember, and not uncommonly till the middle of October. 
In our neighbourhood occurrences after the end of the 
latter month are very exceptional, but very many 
instances of their stay well into the winter are on record 
from various parts of the three kingdoms, especially in 
