250 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
the seven to ten or a dozen eggs are creamy or 
yellowish-white in ground-colour, rather sharply 
pointed at the little end, and lightly or heavily 
blotched with rich, reddish-brown which varies a 
good deal in depth of shade. They are rather 
larger than a Missel Thrush's. The note of the 
cock consists of three harsh, curious notes, with a 
good deal of the quality of the Corncrake's 
peculiar voice, and often repeated many times in 
succession. The Quail, like the Land-rail, is one 
of the birds which are generally summer visitors 
only, but are now and then discovered in this 
country during the winter months. Its food con- 
sists of seeds, as well as of insects and small snails. 
LAND-RAIL. 
{Crex pratensis.) 
Corncrake, Dakerhen. — The Land- rail, like the 
Nightingale, is one of the birds which are very 
much more familiar to ear than to eye, and also, 
like the Nightingale, its voice is to be heard both 
by day and by night. The two birds often hold a 
strange concert together in the meadow-lands of 
southern England during the still nights of May 
and June — strange because the supreme melody of 
