it was on the last of that month that I lately heard its
rasping note in a quiet park not a mile out of a busy market town on the
Welsh border, and forgave its monotone because, more emphatically than
even the cuckoo's dissyllable, it announced that, at last, "summer was
icumen in." This feeble-looking but indomitable traveller is closely
associated during its visit with the resident partridge. They nest in
the same situations, hiding in the fields of grass and standing corn,
and eventually being flushed in company by September guns walking
abreast through the clover-bud. Sport is not the theme of these notes,
and it will therefore suffice to remark in passing on the curious manner
in which even good shots, accustomed to bring down partridges with some
approach to certainty, contrive to miss these lazy, flapping fowl when
walking them up. Dispassionately considered, the landrail should be a
bird that a man could scarcely miss on the first occasion of his
handling a gun; in cold fact, it often survives two barrels apparently
untouched. This immunity it owes in all probability to its slow and
heavy flight, since those whose eyes are accustomed to the rapid
movement of partridges are apt to misjudge the allowance necessary for
such a laggard and to fire in front of it. It is difficult to realise
that, whereas the strong-winged partridge is a stay-at-home, the
deliberate landrail has come to us from Africa and will, if spared by
the guns, return there.

Perhaps the most curious and interesting habit recorded of the landrail
is that of feigning death when suddenly discovered, a method of
self-defence which it shares with opossums, spiders, and in fact other
animals of almost every class. It will, if suddenly surprised by a dog,
lie perfectly still and betray no sign of life. There is, however, at
least one authentic case of a landrail actually dying of fright when
suddenly seized, and it is a disputed point whether the so-called
pretence of death should not rather be regarded as a state of trance.
Strict regard for the truth compels the admission that on the only
occasion on which I remember taking hold of a live corncrake the bird,
so far from pretending to be dead, pecked my wrist heartily.

Just as the countryfolk regard the wryneck as leader of the wandering
cuckoos, and the short-eared owl as forerunner of the woodcocks, so the
ancients held that the landrail performed the same service of pioneer to
the quail on its l