Where are the Crakes?
In many parts of England the lament :s heard that the corncrake, once very common indeed, has quite vanished. It used to be said of a great headmaster who was not a great naturalist (though Darwin was one of his alumni) that he had some trees cut down because the craking of the crakes annoyed him. It is generally held—pace the headmaster's ghost— that early thorough cutting of the grass has destroyed the nesting places. The spotted crake (which is a cousin) is one of the very rarest of our birds ; yet one was picked up recently on a road near London, and as for the corncrake, one spent a night in St. James's Park. The comcrake is still, I think, tolerably common in the extreme west of England and in Wales. It is certainly very common in the north-east of Ireland. The bird was always a mystery. It is almost as bad a flyer as the moorhen, but is an invincible migrant covering very wide distances at a stretch. Nevertheless it often begins its journey sluggishly and may be found in eastern corn crops in September on its dilatory passage towards the coast.
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