CHAP. XviII | LANDRAIL—-CUCKOO. 145 
sounds as if it was produced by some brazen instrument. I 
never could ascertain whether this cry is made by the male or 
female bird, or by both incommon: I am inclined to suppose the 
latter is the case, as in endeavouring to make this out I have 
watched carefully a small piece of grass and shot four landrails 
in it in as many minutes, every bird in the act of croaking. 
Two of them were larger and of a redder plumage than the 
others, and were apparently cock birds: this inclines me to think 
that the croaking cry is common to both sexes. Their manner 
of leaving the country is a mystery. Having hatched their 
young, they take to the high corn-fields, and we never see them 
again, excepting by chance one comes across a brood at dawn of 
day, hunting along a path or ditch side for snails, worms, and 
flies, which are their only food, this bird being entirely insec- 
tivorous, never eating corn or seeds. By the time the corn is 
cut they are all gone; how they go, or whither, I know not, but 
with the exception of a stray one or two I never see them in 
the shooting-season, although the fields are literally alive with 
them in the breeding-time. You can seldom flush a landrail 
twice ; having alighted he runs off at a quick pace, and turning 
and doubling round a dog, will not rise. I have caught them 
more than once when they have pitched by chance in an open 
wood, and run into a hole or elsewhere at the root of a tree; they 
sometimes hide their head, like the story of the ostrich, and allow 
themselves to be lifted up. Unlike most other migrating birds, 
the landrail is in good order on his first arrival, and being then 
very fat and delicate in flavour, is very good eating. Their 
nest is of a very artless description, a mere hollow scratched in 
the middle of a grass field, in which they lay about eight eggs. 
The young ones at first are quite black, curious-looking little 
birds, with the same attitudes and manner of running as their 
parents, stooping their heads and looking more like mice or rats 
than a long-legged bird. 
Besides those already mentioned, I can only call to mind two 
other birds that visit us for the breeding-season—the cuckoo and 
the nightjar. 
The cuckoo, like the landrail, is connected in all my ideas with 
spring and sunshine, though frequenting such a different descrips 
tion of country; the landrail always inhabiting the most ope 
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