NOTES AND QUERIES. 459 



fields, in the parish of Little Walthara, Essex. In one of the fields, which 

 was standing barley, I killed at a double shot a Crex pratensis. On October 

 22nd, 1888, just as I was finishing a day's Snipe-shooting with a friend 

 at Hickling, in this county, I saw him knock down a Spotted Rail, and, on 

 going to help him find it, my dog caught another and flushed a third, which 

 I shot: these three (one adult and two immature males) all met their death 

 within twenty yards of each other. Coots are of course gregarious, and 

 Moorhens — the connecting-link between Coots and Rails — are far more 

 sociable, than many people imagine. I have frequently seen twenty or 

 thirty together on one Pheasants' "feed," and on February 25th, 1880, I 

 counted over forty feeding on a grass meadow adjoining the Rookery pond 

 at Wooton, Surrey. On December 28th, 1880, my brother and I 

 started twelve, and shot eight out of one holly bush in which they had gone 

 to perch. The latest and earliest dates I have for the occurrence of the Spotted 

 Rail are as follows :— Feb. 24th, 1882, Potter Heigham ; Nov. 5th, 9th, 

 and 19th, West Somerton and Brunstead. There are several reasons why 

 more Spotted Rails are killed in October than in any other month. In 

 the first place, Snipe-shooting is more general, and the Jacks, S. galli- 

 nula having arrived, the ground is more thoroughly worked by dogs. 

 Secondly, by October, vegetation begins to die off, frost and rain help to 

 level it down, and waters generally begin to rise ; concealment, therefore, 

 is not so easy, and the limits thereof become more circumscribed as the 

 season progresses. Thirdly, as the time of autumnal migration approaches, 

 the individual broods probably re-assemble, if after hatching they do ever 

 stray far apart, and perhaps — being near the coast — their numbers are 

 reinforced by birds that have summered farther north. On Oct. 17th ult. 

 my brother and I were shooting some rough marshes in the neigh- 

 bouring parish of East Ruston, when a bird rose of its own accord, at some 

 distance from us, which I took to be a Woodcock : it flew high and very 

 strongly, and, after a flight of some 300 yards, eventually dropped in 

 another rough and still wetter marsh. My brother being nearer to it — we 

 were walking wide apart — said directly that it was a Land Rail, a state- 

 ment which I called in question, never having seen a Rail fly like it before, 

 and was consequently rather ashamed of myself for thus not knowing 

 "a hawk from a harnser," when, with Nep's help, we brought a veritable 

 Crex pratensis to bag. But others have been thus deceived before me, as 

 I read in'Yarrell' — "Land Rails have also been shot in mistake for 

 Woodcocks in winter, especially on the promontories of the West Coast of 

 Ireland." From birds I have shot I have noticed that Land Rails are as 

 fond of feeding on " Daddy Longlegs " (the perfect insect of Tipula) as 

 Pheasants are on oak spangles, the excrescences on the under-side of oak 

 leaves caused by some gall-insect ; but whether they are the work of C. 

 quercifolii I am not sure. As to the cause or causes of migration, if birds 



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