Sean Mac Connell's Midlands Report of last Thursday, pin-pointing Banagher Bridge as the centre for those who wish to hear the corncrake, made one wonder what Gilbert White of Selborne had to say on the bird. No mention of corncrake in the index of an 1891 edition of his famous book. Look under land-rail and there it is. "A man brought a land-rail or dakerhen, a bird so rare in this district that we seldom see more than one or two in a season and those only in autumn. This is deemed a bird of passage by all the writers; yet from its formation seems to be poorly qualified for migration; for its wings are short, and placed so forward, and out of the centre of gravity, that it flies in a very heavy and embarrassed manner, with its legs hanging down; and can hardly be sprung a second time, as it runs very fast and seems to depend more on the swiftness of its feet than on its flying."
But naturalists in those days and even later were always concerned with the inner workings. White goes on: "When we came to draw it, we found the entrails so soft and tender in appearance they might have been dressed like the ropes of a woodcock. The craw or crop was small and lank, containing a mucus; the gizzard thick and strong, and filled with small shell snails, some whole, and many ground to pieces through the attrition which is occasioned by the muscular force and motion of that intestine." As there was no gravel among the food, he supposed the shells might perform that function. He bemoans the fact that land-rails used to abound. "I remember, in the low, wet bean-fields of Christian Malford in North Wilts, and in the meadows near Paradise Gardens in Oxford, where I have often heard them cry crex crex.
"The bird mentioned above weighed seven-and-a-half ounces, was fat and tender and in flavour like the flesh of a woodcock. The liver was very large and delicate." Eating birds in the interest of science or whatever was, until some time in this century, the norm for a curious naturalist. Under this piece by White, in very small print is a footnote, by Marwick, to whom many of the letters are addressed. It states that the land-rail or corncrake is a regular migrant notwithstanding the shortness of its wing. "The food is somewhat varied; we once took a mouse from the stomach of a land-rail."