Order XII. Gh-aUce 179 



ORDER XII. GRALLiB 



Suborder Pulicariee 



Family RALLID.^, or Rails, Water-hens, and Coots 



The members of this Suborder are skulking marsh- 

 birds, which have downy young that swim at once. 

 The bill is not very long and in Water-hens and Coots 

 develops into a naked plate or " shield " on the fore- 

 head ; the feet are long as a rule, while the lengthy 

 toes have a membranous edge in Water-hens, and 

 membranous lobes in Coots. The wings and tail are 

 comparatively short. 



The Land-rail or Corn-crake {Crex crex), which 

 visits us in numbers between April and September, 

 and occasionally remains later, has for some unknown 

 reason decreased considerably in our eastern districts 

 during the last thirty years, though perhaps not else- 

 where. Fields of growing corn, grass, and clover, 

 rush-beds, and thickets of low gorse are its favourite 

 haunts, and there it lays some seven or eight dull 

 cream-coloured eggs with rusty red and lilac markings 

 in a hole scraped in the soil, with a little lining. The 

 Land-rail is a ventriloquist and it is often difficult to 

 say whence its craking voice proceeds, while both sexes 

 are equally hard to flush ; the flight is slow and heavy, 

 the food more of worms, slugs, and insects than of 

 plants and seeds. This species, which is brown, lighter 

 below and with darker markings above, ranges over 

 northern and central Europe and Asia and migrates 

 far south. 



The Water-rail (Ballus aquaticus) is a skulking: 

 and silent species known to breed in many marshy 

 locahties in England, southern Scotland, and Ireland, 



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