218 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
than in any other bird; yet they utter their loud call 
of ‘Crake, crake, crake!’ not unlike the turning of a 
wooden rattle, continuously though only at a short 
distance. 
It is difficult to tell from what place the cry pro- 
ceeds : at one moment it sounds almost close at hand, 
the next fifty yards off; then, after a brief silence, a 
‘long way to one side or the other. The attempt to 
mark the spot is in vain; you think you have it, and 
rush there, but nothing is to be seen, and a minute 
afterwards ‘ Crake, crake!’ comes behind you. For the 
first two or three such attempts the crake seems to 
move but a little way, dodging to and froin a zig-zag, 
so that his call is never very far off; but if repeated 
again and again he gets alarmed, there is a silence, 
and presently you hear him in a corner of the mead 
a hundred yards distant. Perhaps once, if you steal 
up very, very quietly, and suddenly dart forward, or 
if you have been waiting till he has come unawares 
close to you, you may possibly see the grass move as. 
if something passed through it ; but in a moment he 
is gone, without a glimpse of his body having been 
seen. His speed must be very great to slip like this. 
from one side of the field to the other in so few 
seconds, 
The fact that the call apparently issues from the 
grass in one place, and yet upon reaching it the bird 
is not to be found, has given rise to the belief that the 
crake is a ventriloquist. It may be so; but even 
