(n.) A bird (Crex crex or C. pratensis) which frequents grain fields; the European crake or land rail; -- called also corn bird.
Example Sentences:
(1) Peasants grazed their animals on common land and grew crops on open strips, accompanied by the wildlife now so absent from most of England, from glow worms through to corncrakes.
(2) "Our ancestors used to lie awake at night unable to sleep because of the noise of the corncrake."
(3) Here are preserved corncrakes, birds once found all over the Newcastle area.
(4) Other benefits were beyond value, said Tew: "Lots of you, like me, feel the worse for not hearing the corncrake in the country, or the flash of a red squirrel.
(5) Stuart Housden, the Scottish director of the RSPB , said ministers in Edinburgh were risking legal action by the EU after "raiding" the budget which was intended to conserve corncrakes, rare orchids, peatbogs and flower meadows in the face of modern farming techniques, climate change and habitat loss.
(6) So widespread are the problems that some once prolific species are under threat, including the common toad, common frog, common skate and the corncrake.