NOTES ON OXFORDSHIRE ORNITHOLOGY. 451 



Oxford, where it was lost sight of. [This is evidently the speci- 

 men stated by Messrs. Matthews to have been for some time in 

 the possession of Mr. Kirtland, who obtained it soon after its 

 capture, " but is at present in the collection of the Rev. H. 

 Roundell" (of Fringford), (Zool. 1849, p. 2002). I should be glad 

 to know what became of this collection, which contained many 

 Oxfordshire rarities.] 



Snipe (Gallinago coelestis). — I think they may breed here. A 

 nest and eggs were taken at Sonning many years ago, and I had 

 some of the eggs. Put up a pair " not long ago — May, 1807 — on 

 the edge of a piece of water near Shiplake Station." 



Corn-Crake (Crex pratensis). — A very common visitor. Dur- 

 ing summer its harsh cry may be heard from almost every field. 

 It delights most in moist grass fields on the banks of the 

 Thames. Several may be heard calling against each other. It 

 comes the last week in April or first in May, and departs, as a 

 rule, late in September ; but I have seen them late in November. 

 Breeds in grass meadows and clover-fields. Many nests are 

 mown out during the hay harvest, " when I can always get num- 

 bers of their eggs, sometimes three or four nests in a field. They 

 will sometimes lay in the withy eyots." [I can remember when 

 the Corn-Crake was nearly as common in the north of the 

 county. When I was a boy, as far as I can remember, pretty 

 well every field shut up for grass had its Corn-Crake, and one 

 always heard of nests mown out when the grass was cut. The cry 

 of this bird was as familiar a summer sound as that of the 

 Cuckoo. I have heard the Corn-Crake calling in Christ Church 

 meadow, and once when sleeping in Wellington Square, Oxford, 

 in May, 1880, I could hear the cry as I lay in bed. Gilbert 

 White noticed the abundance of the Corn-Crake at Oxford. He 

 writes : " Landrails used to abound formerly, I remember, . . . 

 in the meadows near Paradise Gardens at Oxford, when I have 

 often heard them cry crex, crex." Now, for some unexplained 

 reason,* the Corn-Crake has become very rare here in summer, 



* It is possible that the late dry summers may have had something to do 

 With the scarcity of the Corn-Crake. The late Mr. Cordeaux stated that in 

 the parish of Great Cotes and the adjoining parishes — a district particularly 

 adapted to their habits^ — Corn-Crakes were comparatively rare until about 

 1861. In 1864 they became suddenly tolerably plentiful, and for the next 



