Birds in the Calendar

by Frederick G. Aflalo

BIRDS IN THE CORN

More than one of our summer visitors, like the nightingale and cuckoo, are less often seen than heard, but certainly the most secretive hider of them all is the landrail. This harsh-voiced bird reaches our shores in May, and it was on the last of that month that I lately heard its rasping note in a quiet park not a mile out of a busy market town on the Welsh border, and forgave its monotone because, more emphatically than even the cuckoo's dissyllable, it announced that, at last, "summer was icumen in." This feeble-looking but indomitable traveller is closely associated during its visit with the resident partridge. They nest in the same situations, hiding in the fields of grass and standing corn, and eventually being flushed in company by September guns walking abreast through the clover-bud. Sport is not the theme of these notes, and it will therefore suffice to remark in passing on the curious manner in which even good shots, accustomed to bring down partridges with some approach to certainty, contrive to miss these lazy, flapping fowl when walking them up. Dispassionately considered, the landrail should be a bird that a man could scarcely miss on the first occasion of his handling a gun; in cold fact, it often survives two barrels apparently untouched. This immunity it owes in all probability to its slow and heavy flight, since those whose eyes are accustomed to the rapid movement of partridges are apt to misjudge the allowance necessary for such a laggard and to fire in front of it. It is difficult to realise that, whereas the strong-winged partridge is a stay-at-home, the deliberate landrail has come to us from Africa and will, if spared by the guns, return there.

Perhaps the most curious and interesting habit recorded of the landrail is that of feigning death when suddenly discovered, a method of self-defence which it shares with opossums, spiders, and in fact other animals of almost every class. It will, if suddenly surprised by a dog, lie perfectly still and betray no sign of life. There is, however, at least one authentic case of a landrail actually dying of fright when suddenly seized, and it is a disputed point whether the so-called pretence of death should not rather be regarded as a state of trance. Strict regard for the truth compels the admission that on the only occasion on which I remember taking hold of a live corncrake the bird, so far from pretending to be dead, pecked my wrist heartily.

Just as the countryfolk regard the wryneck as leader of the wandering cuckoos, and the short-eared owl as forerunner of the woodcocks, so the ancients held that the landrail performed the same service of pioneer to the quail on its long journeys over land and sea. Save in exceptional years, England is not visited by quail in sufficient numbers to lend interest to this aspect of a bird attractive on other grounds, but the coincidence of their arrival with us is well established.

The voice of the corncrake, easily distinguished from that of any other bird of our fields, may be approximately reproduced by using a blunt saw against the grain on hard wood. So loud is it at times that I have heard it from the open window of an express train, the noise of which drowned all other birdsong, and it seems remarkable that such a volume of sound should come from a throat so slender. Yet the rasping note is welcome during the early days of its arrival, since, just as the cuckoo gave earlier message of spring, so the corncrake, in sadder vein, heralds the ripeness of our briefer summer.

The East Anglian name "dakker-hen" comes from an old word descriptive of the bird's halting flight; and indeed to see a landrail drop, as already mentioned, after flying a few yards, makes one incredulous when tracing its long voyages on the map. In the first place, however, it should be remembered that the bird does not drop back in the grass because it is tired, but solely because it knows the way to safety by running out of sight. In the second, the apparent weakness of its wings is not real. Quails have little round wings that look ill adapted to long journeys. I have been struck by this times and again when shooting quail in Egypt and Morocco, yet of the quail's fitness for travel there has never, since Bible days, been any question.

The landrail is an excellent table bird. Personally I prefer it to the partridge, but this is perhaps praising it too highly. Legally of course it is "game," as a game licence must be held by anyone who shoots it; and, though protected in this country only under the Wild Birds Act, Irish law extends this by a month, so that it may not be shot in that country after the last day of January. Like most migratory birds, its numbers vary locally in different seasons, and its scarcity in Hampshire, to which White makes reference, has by no means been maintained of recent years, as large bags have been recorded in every part of that county.

The common partridge is—at any rate for the naturalist—a less interesting subject than its red-legged cousin, which seems to have been first introduced from France (or possibly from the island of Guernsey, where it no longer exists) in the reign of Charles II. That this early experiment was not, however, attended by far-reaching results seems probable, since early in the reign of George III we find the Marquis of Hertford and other well-known sporting landowners making fresh attempts, the stock of "Frenchmen" being renewed from time to time during the next fifty years, chiefly on the east side of England, where they have always been more in evidence than farther west. In Devon and Cornwall, indeed, the bird is very rare, and in Ireland almost unknown.

Its red legs stand it in good stead, for it can run like a hare, and in this way it often baffles the guns. It is not, however, so much its reluctance to rise that has brought it into disrepute with keepers as its alleged habit of ousting the native bird, in much the same way as the "Hanover" rat has superseded the black aboriginal, although far from the "Frenchman" driving the English partridge off the soil, there appears to be even no truth in the supposed hostility between the two, since they do not commonly affect the same type of country; and even when they meet they nest in close proximity and in comparative harmony. Nevertheless the males, even of the same species, are apt to be pugnacious in the breeding season.