28 THE COMMON CRANE. 
THIS CRANE does not of course breed with us, but it breeds 
in many parts of Europe, from Spain to Lapland, in Turkestan, 
Mongolia and Siberia. 
Formerly it used to breed in England, and there was in old 
times a fine of twenty pence (then no small sum) for every 
Crane’s egg taken or destroyed ; but these good old days have 
long since past away, and the Crane, like the great Bustard, is 
scarcely ever now seen in Great Britain even as a chance visitor. 
- The nest, like that of the Sarus, is seldom, if ever, concealed 
in any way; but, unlike that ofits Indian congener, is a com- 
paratively slight affair of sedges and grass or small twigs twenty 
to thirty inches across, and only a few inchesin thickness. It 
is usually placed in the open in some marsh, moss, or morass. 
The birds lay from the latter part of April to well into June, 
according to locality ; as a rule two, occasionally, as is the case 
also with the Sarus, three eggs. 
The eggs vary in colour from a rich brownish to a pale grey- 
ish olive, and are blotched, smeared, streaked, and spotted, more 
or less thinly, never densely, with primary markings of varying 
shades of brownish red and reddish brown, and secondary 
subsurface-looking spots and clouds of pale brown, varying to 
orey. 
In length they vary from 3°6 to 4’0 inches, and in width from 
2°3° to 2°6, but the average of fifteen is 3°9 by 2:4. 
I HAVE not many measurements recorded of this species, and 
what I have do not bring out any constant difference in the 
size of the sexes, although, if my memory is to be trusted, the 
males do run larger and heavier than the females. The follow- 
ing were the dimensions of four females and three males :— 
Length, 43 to 48; expanse, 79 to 91 ; wing to end of longest 
primaries, 20°5 to 24'0 ; tail from vent, 7:0 to 9'12 ; tarsus, 8:25 
to 9'9; bill from gape, 4°3 to 4°8 ; weight, 9°5 tbs to 13 Ibs. 
The irides are deep reddish, orange red, reddish brown, 
dingy orange, and in the young salmon coloured to very pale 
yellow ; the legs and feet black ; the soles brown to fleshy. 
The bill is dingy horny green, or greenish brown or pale 
plumbeous with a greenish tinge, varying a good deal in shade, 
and yellowish horny towards the tip; in the young the bill is 
lighter coloured, and the base of the upper mandible and the 
membrane in which the nares are set, pale yellowish brown. In 
the adult the lores, forehead, crown, and occiput are destitute 
of feathers ; the skin blackish or dark plumbeous in front and 
at the top of the head, and dingy red, or in some, orange red, 
mingled with greenish yellow on the occiput ; the whole feather 
less space, in some sparsely,in some very thickly, clad with 
coarse black hairs, a few of which are also generally to be seen 
on either side of the lower mandible at its base. 
