NOTES AND QUERIES. SU 



Swallows were flying round, crying loudly. The nest was of the 

 usual hard mud, lined with fine hay and feathers, quite round and 

 deeply cup-shaped. There is no building within a radius of six 

 hundred yards. When my two sons went to photograph the nest on 

 x\ugust 5th there were four young birds in the nest, doubtless the 

 second brood. This abnormal nest greatly resembles the vignette in 

 Yarrell's ' History of British Birds ' of one in a sycamore overhanging 

 a pond at Penshurst, eighty years ago. — Edward A. Fitch (Maldon, 

 Essex). 



Decrease of the Corn-Crake and its Cause. — The present summer 

 must be reckoned a " Corn-Crake Year " for Lancashire, at least, for 

 there the birds are commoner than I have known them for many 

 seasons ; at Tandle Hill, between Middleton and Eochdale, I noticed 

 five in ear-shot at once within a radius of a hundred yards on June 

 19th. Seebohm says that Corn-Crakes are most numerous in wet 

 seasons, but this is certainly not true for the present summer. Three- 

 quarters of a century ago Dr. Skaife discussed (Mag. Nat. Hist. 1838) 

 the well-known fluctuations of the Corn-Crake in Lancashire, and the 

 question has occupied subsequent students in that county, as readers 

 of Mitchell's ' Birds of Lancashire ' will remember. I have else- 

 where (' Lancashire Naturalist,' vol. iii. 286-287) offered an explana- 

 tion that may be repeated here : in such places as the wilder parts of 

 North Wales or the Lake District, where the bird is extremely abun- 

 dant, the breeding grounds are frequently rough pastures that serve 

 as admirable nurseries for the young. In haymaking districts like 

 South Lancashire successful broods are rare, for the mowers in- 

 variably find and usually destroy the nests, and, as the Corn-Crake 

 is a most unfortunate bird on migration, it is easy to understand how 

 a local colony may become more than decimated, and a district lose 

 nearly all its Corn-Crakes until a fresh stock is crowded in from the 

 more favourable breeding grounds in other localities. I think I am 

 correct in saying that " Corn-Crake Years " are purely local pheno- 

 mena, and, although the birds are numerous now in Lancashire and 

 Eastern Cheshire, it would not be safe to say that they are abundant 

 in all other breeding counties. 



This curious annual fluctuation has little to do with the dis- 

 appearance of the Corn-Crake from the south-eastern counties of 

 England. During the past two or three summers I have visited 

 many parts of Essex, Middlesex, Herts, Bucks, Surrey, Kent, and 

 Sussex, where it has been my luck not to hear a single bird, and I feel 

 emboldened to add that the species is quite non-existent in summer 



