Photo by Scholastic Photo. Co.] [Parson's Green.
COMMON CRANE.
The note of the crane is sonorous and trumpet-like.
Photo by Scholastic Photo. Co., Parson's Green.
WATTLED CRANE.
So called from the pendent lappets of the throat. It is a South African species.
One of the most beautiful of this group of peculiarly handsome birds was once numbered among British birds; now, alas! like the bustard, it is one of the rarest visitors. Till the end of the sixteenth century the Common Crane reared its young in the fen-lands. In Saxon times we read of a request being made by King Ethelbert to Boniface, Bishop of Mayence, begging him to send over two falcons suitable for flying at the cranes in Kent. In one case, at a feast given by Archbishop Neville in the reign of Edward IV., as many as 204 cranes figured in the menu. Later, it is interesting to note, they seem to have fallen somewhat into disfavour, since we read of a Dr. Muffet, of Wiltshire, somewhere about 1570, declaring cranes to be "distinctly unfit for sound men's tables.... Yet being young, killed with a goshawk, and hanged two or three days by the heels, eaten with hot gelentine, and drowned in sack, it is permitted unto indifferent stomachs."
