Volume 34, Plate XXIX / Ornithology (Birds)

Meadow or Corn Crake

Crex pratensis

A summer visitant generally distributed over the British Islands yet affecting low sheltered vales along rivers, the Corn Crake utters its persevering crake morning and evening with a ventriloquial quality, though it has declined in some districts without apparent cause. Hair-brown above broadly edged with yellowish-brown, with orange-brown wing-coverts and reddish-orange barred flanks, it nests on the ground laying ten or eleven eggs and feeds on insects, worms, and slugs.