240 On the Occurrence of some of the Rarer Species of Birds 



or, rather, approaching summer, as they are rarely heard before the 

 first week in May, when their " crake-creek " on a still quiet night 

 is a most pleasing sound to the naturalist's ear. This bird is a 

 wonderful mesmerist, as, though it may not move its position, its 

 cry seems to come upon your ear, now from a long distance off, and 

 now again to vibrate almost from the ground beneath your feet. In 

 the evening when everything is quite still its call has a most peculiar 

 effect; it seems to run along the ground towards you, like an object in 

 motion, rather than being a mere sound. Meyer mentions a curious 

 incident concerning these birds, viz., how they will answer to the 

 sound of the winding up of a fishing reel; and he has more than once 

 known a Land Rail to run up within five or six yards of the fisherman, 

 evidently thinking that the sound of the reel was a summons from 

 one of its own species. The Land Rail is one of those birds that sorely 

 puzzles you as to its capabilities of crossing the sea, for no one who 

 has only seen it flitting over the clover-heads could imagine that it 

 could ever sustain a flight across even the narrowest part of the 

 ocean. They are the most inveterate runners, evidently never 

 having forgotten the lesson instilled into their minds by their 

 parents, that legs were made to use before wings ! In rainy weather, 

 when the clover is wet and the grass damp and moist, you may 

 often run them down with a good dog, their plumage becoming so 

 saturated that they lose their power of rising. One year I asked 

 the mowers in the field just opposite the Vicarage to be careful to 

 keep the eggs of this bird for me, if they should happen to cut a 

 nest out ; as there had been a pair there all the May month, and I 

 felt certain they must be breeding there. They found the nest, as I 

 suspected, during the mowing, with ten eggs in it, and taking them 

 out they carefully placed them on the top of the swath they had 

 just mown, intending on their return at the end of the next swath 

 to stop for luncheon, when they meant to bring them in to me. 

 But they " reckoned without their host," for when they came to the 

 place, at the end of their next turn, after an interval of some five 

 minutes or so, they looked for them in vain — the watchful Jackdaws 

 from the churchyard elms having carried off every one of them in 

 that space of time. In 1881, near Abergavenny 3 I surprised a 



