Shooting Corncrakes. 221 
sometimes to fix the position of the death-tick in 
woodwork. The home-field or meadow here is a 
favourite haunt of the crakes, for like all other birds 
they have their special places of resort. Another 
meadow, at some distance on the same farm, is equally 
favoured by them. This meadow adjoins that second 
line of bird-travel, following a brook previously alluded 
to. But as the crakes, though they will take refuge 
in a hedge, do not travel along it habitually, this cir- 
cumstance may. be accidental. Crakes, notwithstand- 
ing they run so swiftly, do not seem to move far when 
once they have arrived ; they appear to restrict them- 
selves to the field they have chosen, or, at the furthest, 
make an excursion into the next and return again, 
so that you may always know where to go to hear 
one. 
The mowers cutting these meadows find the eggs 
—the nest being on the ground—and bring them to 
the farmstead, both as a curiosity and to be eaten, 
some thinking them equal to plover’s eggs. Though 
you may follow the sound ‘Crake, crake !’ in the grass 
for hours at a time, and sometimes get so near as to 
throw your walking-stick at a bunch of grass, you will 
never see the bird; and nothing, neither stick nor 
stone, will make it rise. Yet it is easy to shoot, as I 
found, in one particular way. The trick is to drive it 
into a hedge. Two persons and a spaniel well in 
hand walk towards the ‘ Crake, crake!’ keeping some 
distance apart. The bird at first runs straight away ; 
