How sweet and pleasant grows the way
Through summertime again
While landrails call from day to day
Amid the grass and grain.
‘The Landrail’ by John Clare (1793–1864)
WHEN the 19th-century poet John Clare wrote these lines, the rasping rattle of the corncrake () could be heard in every county in the land. The call was so loud and insistent that many country people complained it kept them awake; however, this is not an issue ever voiced now. By the late 1930s, field after field had fallen silent after intensive farming practices destroyed the long grass in which the corncrakes nested. Although some populations have maintained a
