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Updated: July 12, 2025
There were larks singing in the pale blue above his head; a landrail sent up its harsh cry from the meadow on the left; the crow of a cock rose clear from the valley. He looked about him, and rode briskly on down the incline in front of him and up the ascent beyond.
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.
"Oh no," he said; "the man knew well enough that I was lying." However this may be, the Professor's manner changed. "You are right," he said, "I thought they were landrail bones, but was not sure till I had one in my hand. I see, too, that the plucked birds are landrails, but there is little light, and I have not often seen them without their feathers."
And the larks trilled unceasingly, the corncrakes called to one another, and the landrail cried as though someone were really scraping at an old iron rail. At midday Olga and Sasha reached a big village. There in the broad street they met the little old man who was General Zhukov's cook. He was hot, and his red, perspiring bald head shone in the sunshine.
After resting at this point half an hour to breathe our mules, the guides got into their saddles, and we did likewise, and so on again along the side of the ravine, only not of a cluster as heretofore, but one behind the other in a long line, the mules falling into this order of themselves as if they had travelled the path an hundred times; but there was no means of going otherwise, the path being atrociously narrow and steep, and only fit for wild goats, there being no landrail, coping, or anything in the world to stay one from being hurled down a thousand feet, and the mountain sides so inclined that 'twas a miracle the mules could find foothold and keep their balance.
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.
The sky was beginning to grow grey, a few rooks had cawed, the swallows were twittering, the landrail was craking from the Ox-close, and a favourite cock, which he used to call his morning gun, leaped out from some hollies, and gave his accustomed crow. The ear of his master was deaf to the call. He had obeyed a sublimer summons, and had woke up to the glories of the eternal world.
Nevertheless the males, even of the same species, are apt to be pugnacious in the breeding season. Both the partridge and landrail run serious risk from scythe and plough while sitting on the nest.
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.
In the level meadow from among the tall grasses and white-flowering wild parsley a landrail called 'crake, crake, ceaselessly. There was a sense of rest and quiet, and with it a joyousness of bird-life, such as should be about an English homestead.
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