CHAPTER XI. 
THE CRANE, BUSTARD, SPOONBILL AND BITTERN. 
The Status of the Crane* in the British Isles.—We have 
now carried these Annals through sixteen centuries, not without 
some profit, I hope, and before proceeding any further it is 
proposed to make a digression, there being two or three 
species which it may not be amiss to treat separately, even 
though it may involve a little repetition, and conspicuously 
among them stands the Crane, so intimately associated with 
the pleasures of sport in the Middle Ages. We have already 
quoted such allusions to the Crane in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries as came to hand, and to some extent the 
same ground has been gone over by Mr. J. E. Harting,t so 
on that head no more need be said. Nor need we again 
refer to the finding of its bones: the fact of their having 
been dug up in a semi-fossilised state in sundry parts of 
the kingdom, which were doubtless once fenland, proves 
that the Crane must have been a tolerably common bird. As 
regards the fifteenth century, the Crane was still pretty 
plentiful, but probably more so as a winter visitor than as a 
breeder. It will be remembered that it was in the month of 
September that two hundred and four Cranes were commanded 
in 1465 for the great Neville banquet (supra, p. 87). Cranes 
were a festival dish in high favour,t and from their large size 
even more so than Herons, so long as they were procurable, 
but it is hardly likely that 204 were actually brought to table. 
Such an order, with many other birds besides, would have 
* Grus communis, Bech. 
; The “ Field,” Dec. 23rd, 1882. There is an entry of fourpence in 
the Countess of Leicester’s Roll (antea, p. 50), 1265, paid to a boy for 
seeking a Crane, gruem in puteo, but Mr. A. H. Evans tells me that this does 
not mean in a well, as has been supposed, but in a spring, or marsh. 
In the ancient Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham, printed for the 
Surtees Society (1898), entries of Cranes occur in 1312, 1358, 1375 and 1390. 
“ 
t One of the earliest articles in ‘‘ Archaeologia’’ is ‘‘ A Dissertation 
on the Crane as a Dish”? (“* Arch.,” 1773, p. 171). 
