During an hour or two log watching at Kelly Swamp over the
last couple of days, I found the time could be passed by mentally composing a
little verse:
Crakeless in the
morning light the dead tree sprawls supine,
where coot and
moorhen come to play, and brownish ducks recline.
Our eyes ache
for a smaller shape, that quick and furtive skulk,
but all the
rails in view today are of a larger bulk.
Actually that’s not quite accurate. When a night heron
flew onto the dead tree this morning, Shorty saw a crakelike shape flush from
lower down. When this reappeared in the tangled branches it was clearly the
little chap that Louis Vieillot, in 1819, called Rallus Bailloni for the
natural history collector ‘who first discovered it in Picardy where it arrives
in the month of April’ . This is the species some have seen in the last
couple of days, but it does not rule out a Lewin’s Rail at the same spot, that
other chap having been regularly reported by its call over the last few months,
in the general vicinity.
