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Updated: May 22, 2025
And for some remarks on this subject by Darwin in his Essay on Instinct, see the same volume, pp. 365, 366. Also Alix, Esprit de nos Bêtes, 1890, pp. 543-548. Among fish, the Perch and the Sturgeon feign death; according to Couch, the Landrail, the Skylark, the Corncrake adopt the same device. Among mammals, the best-known example is probably the Opossum.
The comncrake or landrail is difficult even to see, so closely does he conceal himself in the tall grasses, and his call echoed and re-echoed deceives those who try to find him. Yet by great patience and watchful skilfulness the corncrake is sometimes caught by hand. If tracked, and if you can see him the most difficult part you can put your hand on him.
Save in exceptional years, England is not visited by quail in sufficient numbers to lend interest to this aspect of a bird attractive on other grounds, but the coincidence of their arrival with us is well established. The voice of the corncrake, easily distinguished from that of any other bird of our fields, may be approximately reproduced by using a blunt saw against the grain on hard wood.
The music ceased; the night for a space swooned into a numb and desolate silence. Then in the field behind, the last corncrake harshly called; a shepherd whistled on his dogs; a cart rumbled over the cobbles, making for the shed. The sound of the river as it came to him among the alder-trees seemed the sound the wave makes in the ears of the sinking and exhausted swimmer.
The eggs and young of the lark, the corncrake, the partridge, or of any other bird that built on the ground, were never safe once the hedgehog had crossed the lines of scent left by the parents around their nest.
They sat at the fire, and while the Old Woman of Beare spun threads on a very ancient spindle, and while the corncrake, the cuckoo and the swallow picked up grains and murmured to themselves, Gilly of the Goatskin told them the Unique Tale. And the story as Gilly of the Goatskin told it follows this. A Unique Tale A King and a Queen were walking one day by the blue pool in their domain.
By a copse, two rabbits the latest up of all those which had sported during the night stayed till I came near, and then quietly moved in among the ferns and foxgloves. In the narrowest part of the wood between the hedge and the river a corncrake called his loudest "crake, crake," incessantly.
"Nan, Nan, you are mine, you are mine!" said he huskily, and he kissed her again. Out in the fields, a corncrake raised its rasping vesper and a shepherd whistled on his dogs. The carts rumbled as they made for the sheds.
"I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn't mind being quiet a bit. My wife says she can't get the children to sleep. It's too bad, you know, 'pon my word it is." "Gor on," the corncrake would answer surlily. "You keep your wife herself quiet; that's enough for you to do." And on he would go again worse than before. Then a mother blackbird, from a little further off, would join in the fray.
She went on talking and talking, Gilly and the King's Son hearing what she said when she spoke in a sudden high voice, and not hearing when she murmured on as if talking to the ashes or to the pot or to the corncrake, the cuckoo or the swallow that were picking grains off the floor.
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