THE LAND-RAIL
Crex pratensis, Bechstein
Grass lands throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland form the summer home of this well-known and abundant species. It is a migrant, arriving towards the end of April and leaving our shores again in September, though a few individuals occasionally remain and pass the winter in Ireland and some of the western counties of England. It is always more abundant in the west, and during the last few years has become comparatively scarce and local in our eastern and south-eastern counties.
The Rails are birds of poor flight and skulking habits, rarely taking to their wings unless hard pressed, and even at such times flying but a short distance with legs hanging down, and soon dropping again into the nearest cover. Immediately on his arrival the male Land-Rail, or Corncrake as it is often called, utters his well-known crake—a harsh “craak, craak,” repeated with monotonous frequency, especially during the long summer evenings and again before dawn.
The nest is placed in dense cover in the middle of some grass- or corn-fields; it is a deep “scrape,” generally hollowed out by the cock, and lined with bents and grass. Eight to ten eggs are the usual clutch; they resemble those of the Missel Thrush, being greenish white, spotted and blotched with red, brown, and greyish. The male, who takes no part in the incubation, is very attentive to his mate, bringing her delicate tit-bits and accompanying her when she leaves the nest. Their food consists of worms, slugs, snails, and other insects, as well as grain and seeds, so that it is practically omnivorous. When the young are hatched the “craking” ceases, and both parents brood and tend the young. These when first hatched are jet black, and become fully feathered in about a month or five weeks, their wing feathers being the last to grow. Although they can run and leave the nest as soon as hatched, they do not feed themselves for some days, but take all their food from their parents’ beaks. If the first clutch of eggs is destroyed the craking recommences, and a second clutch is laid.
LAND-RAIL
Crex pratensis
During the autumn moult this species, in common with the others of its family, casts all its primaries at once, and is for about ten days incapable of flight.
In winter it is found throughout Africa as far south as Cape Colony.
In winter the sexes are practically identical, the upper parts being dark brown, with rufous edgings to the feathers; wing coverts chestnut; throat and abdomen white; breast pale brown; flanks barred with brown and buff. After the spring moult the male has part of the head, throat, and breast ash grey. The female is greyer than in winter, but much browner than the male, especially on the breast. The young resemble the adults in winter, but the rufous margins are much broader. Length 10·5 in.; wing 5·25 in.