The 
Corncrake. 
(30 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
THe Corr^crake. 
By L. C. GREY. 
Not many birds that visit these islands 
have a wider geographical range than the 
Landrail, or Daker-hen as it is called 
in some districts. It has been recorded 
from Greenland, nests in the Faroe 
Islands, and has been obtained in 
Bermuda, on the eastern shores of the 
United States, and even in New South 
Wales. In Asia it travels east as far as 
Lena, has been found at Gilgit, and 
winters in Arabia. The majority of the 
Corncrakes which visit us spend their 
winter in Africa, penetrating far into the 
interior of what was once the Dark Con¬ 
tinent, and being found even as far south 
as Natal and Cape Colony. Small 
wonder, then, that the Corncrake should 
have been identified as the Ortygometra 
of the ancients, or that it should have 
been believed by them to be the leader 
of the migrating flocks of Quails—the 
birds from which the island of Delos was 
called Ortygia, or the Quail land 
(Vartika, the returning bird), synony¬ 
mous with dawn, and the birthplace of 
Phoebus and Artemis. 
As a summer visitor, the Corncrake 
penetrates, in greater or lesser numbers 
according to the season, to almost every 
corner of the British Islands, even to the 
Outer Hebrides, St. Kilda, and rocky 
islets like Ailsa Craig and the Bass Rock. 
Arriving towards the end of April—a 
week or two later in the extreme North— 
the birds are not long in advertising their 
return by their well-known voice, almost 
as popular as are the notes of the 
Cuckoo, or the Nightingale, and as true 
a song of love and returning spring as 
either, albeit it may sound rather a harsh 
serenade to unattuned ears. 
“ Welcome is the corncrake’s call, though so 
rough and same withal ; 
When it falls upon the ear, who that hears it 
would not hear ? ” 
The majority of the Landrails leave 
this country, or the northern part of it 
at any rate, before harvest, but a 
number always linger on into September 
—particularly in the Southern counties 
—and it is by no means uncommon to 
meet with some of them during the 
following month. Odd birds occa¬ 
sionally spend the winter here, having 
been recorded, at different times, as 
having done so in such widely-distant 
places as the Orkneys and the South of 
England. In the West of Ireland it has 
occurred several times in the depth of 
winter, Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey having 
met with Landrails there in February, 
“ apparently asleep in the centres of dry 
stone walls close to the ground.” Other 
well authenticated instances of the find¬ 
ing of Corncrakes in similar circum¬ 
stances very clearly indicate how the old 
belief, that the birds hibernated habitu¬ 
ally in such places, arose. 
“ Seven sleepers there be, the bat, the bee, the 
butterflee, the cuckoo, and the swallow, 
The kith wake, and the corncrake, all sleep in 
yon little hollow.” 
The finding of a Corncrake in mid¬ 
winter in the East of Scotland is referred 
to by the late Robert Gray, the gifted 
author of “ The Birds of the West of 
Scotland,” but with pawky humour it is 
added that “ it had passed the time in 
confinement in an Edinburgh garrett! 
The nest of the Corncrake is made in 
any thick covert that may be at hand to 
afford concealment; those most com¬ 
monly discovered are cut over during 
hay harvest. That depicted in the 
photograph was on an open common, 
sheltered by a thriving bush of the pretty 
whin (genista anglica), and contained 
thirteen eggs, a rather unusual number, 
nine or ten being the usual full comple¬ 
ment. The young, when first hatched, 
are covered with black down, looking 
much more like little Water-hens than 
what the progeny of the reddish-brown 
bird under discussion might be expected 
to be. 
The Corncrake feeds upon the seeds 
and leaves of a large number of weeds 
