THE SPOTTED CRAKE IN THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 407 



1884. — One near Banbury, 12th September; another on the 

 14th October. 



1885. — One on the 16th October near Bodicote. 



1880. — One in April near Banbury. 



1888. — Several in the first half of October. 



1889. — One, adult, picked up under the telegraph-wires near 

 Banbury, 1st September; one, bird of the year, middle of 

 September. 



Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. — "By no means a common 

 bird, and of local habits," writes Capt. Clark Kennedy, who records 

 a good many occurrences, and remarks : — " It usually arrives here 

 in the beginning of April or towards the end of March, leaving us 

 again in October." The occurrence of a specimen, shot at West 

 Drayton, on the 2nd August, 1860, is mentioned, and of others at 

 Monkey Island in September and October ('Birds of Berkshire 

 and Buckinghamshire,' p. 99). In September, 1889, I examined 

 a bird of the year which had been killed in the low-lying belt of 

 marshy land along the Kennet valley between Kintbury and 

 Newbury, about the middle of July in that year. This locality is an 

 extremely likely breeding-place for the Spotted Crake, a good deal 

 of the ground being covered with beds of reed and willow, inter- 

 sected by ditches, and must be very wet at all seasons. Dr. Lamb 

 (' Ornithologia Bercheria') writes: — "A female of this rare bird 

 was shot at Kintbury, near Newbury, March, 1810" ('Zoologist/ 

 1880, p. 320). 



Middlesex. — Mr. J. E. Harting, in the ' Birds of Middlesex,' 

 (pp. 204, 205), records the occurrence of several specimens of this 

 bird in the county prior to the year 1866. Of these one was 

 procured in the London market in January, 1834, and was in so 

 fresh a condition as to suggest to the late Edward Blyth, who 

 examined it, that it was very likely obtained in some marsh near 

 London, possibly Hackney Marsh, at one time so good a locality 

 for water birds. Another, in the collection of the late Frederick 

 Bond, was shot at Kingsbury, and recorded by him in • The 

 Zoologist' for 1843. Two were killed by Mr. W. K. Heseltine at 

 Laleham in 1858, one on Oct. 5th, the other on Nov. 3rd, on a 

 tract of rough meadow-land, known as the Burghway, which in 

 severe weather was often the resort of Snipe and other migratory 

 birds. On Aug. 2nd, 1860, Mr. W. H. Power shot a Spotted 

 Crake at West Drayton, as it was crossing the river Colne, which 



