. British birds & their eggs : with a new method of identification . white, with a reddish tinge,spotted sparingly with orange-brown and gray;1-45 X 1-1 inch (plate 131). Nest.—A depression in the ground, scantily linedwith bits of dead herbage. The Corn-Crake or Land-Eail is widely distributedthroughout the United Kingdom. It is a bird of thepasture lands, arriving in May, from which time untilthe nest is constructed the incessant Crake ! may beheard by day and night. Although the head of thenewly arrived bird may often be seen as it peeps overthe short, early grass, little more of it is like
. British birds & their eggs : with a new method of identification . white, with a reddish tinge,spotted sparingly with orange-brown and gray;1-45 X 1-1 inch (plate 131). Nest.—A depression in the ground, scantily linedwith bits of dead herbage. The Corn-Crake or Land-Eail is widely distributedthroughout the United Kingdom. It is a bird of thepasture lands, arriving in May, from which time untilthe nest is constructed the incessant Crake ! may beheard by day and night. Although the head of thenewly arrived bird may often be seen as it peeps overthe short, early grass, little more of it is likely to beobserved during the remainder of it-s stay. At times,however, the short-billed, ruddy-bodied, stub-tailedbird, in form somewhat like a slender Partridge, maybe seen as it runs with lowered head, hugging theborder of standing crops or slinking along thefurrows in potato-fields. When the grass is cut ittakes to the growing com. The Oorn-Crake flies onlyunder compulsion, its running and hiding powersoffering it a safer means of escape from all but the O HI < O I zo:Oo <en az < ■2a* SHORTER-BILLED RUNNING BIRDS. 251 most imminent danger. Though a few birds mayoccur together in the same field just after their arrivalin spring, the Corn-Crake is of a splitary habit. Afew birds are known to winter in Ireland, and fewerstill in England. PARTRIDGE—124 inches. The only bird which, as a fre-quenter of cultivated and pasture lands, and becauseof its rounded form, short bill and tail, approximatesto the Corn-Crake ; but the latter, as a yellowish-ruddybird, is wholly unlike the grayish-buown Partridge, which,moreover, freely frequents the open. SPOTTED CRAKE. —Form, like* the Land-Eail(plate 107). Length, 9 inches. Face and throatgrayish; crown dark brown; upper parts olive-brown, with dark streaks and small white spots, thelatter chiefly on the neck and towards the tail;breast brown, also spotted with white, and passinginto gray on the belly ; flanks barred wi
Size: 1215px × 2057px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorbora, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds
