176 Wild Life in a Southern County 



breadth is doubled by the night. But yonder lies a great 

 grey sarsen boulder, like an uncouth beast of ancient days 

 crouching in the hollow. Hush ! there was a slight 

 rustling in the grass there, as of a frightened thing ; it 

 was a startled hare hastening away. The brightest con- 

 stellations of our latitude pour down their rays and influence 

 on the birth of bud and leaf in spring ; and at no other 

 season is the sky so gorgeous with stars. 



The grass in the meadow or home-field as it begins to 

 grow tall in spring is soon visited by the corncrakes, who 

 take up their residence there. In this district (though 

 called the corncrake) these birds seem to frequent the 

 mowing-grass more than the arable fields, and they gener- 

 ally arrive about the time when it has grown sufficiently 

 high and thick to hide their motions. This desire of 

 concealment — to be out of sight — is apparently more 

 strongly marked in them than in any other bird; yet 

 they utter their loud call of ' Crake, crake, crake ! ' not 

 unlike the turning of a wooden rattle, continuously though 

 only at a short distance. 



It is difficult to tell from what place the cry proceeds : 

 at one moment it sounds almost close at hand, the next 

 fifty yards off ; then, after a brief silence, a long way to 

 one side or the other. The attempt to mark the spot is in 

 vain ; you think you have it, and rush there, but nothing 

 is to be seen, and a minute afterwards ' Crake, crake ! ' 

 comes behind you. For the first two or three such at- 

 tempts the crake seems to move but a little way, dodging 

 to and fro in a zig-zag, so that his call is never very far 

 off; but if repeated again and again he gets alarmed 

 there is a silence, and presently you hear him in a corner 

 of the mead a hundred yards distant. Perhaps once if 

 you steal up very, very quietly, and suddenly dart forward 



