Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A common bird (Crex crex) of Eurasia and Africa, having a short bill and brownish-yellow plumage and found in grain fields and meadows.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A common European bird of the rail family (Rallidæ), the Crex pratensis, or land-rail: so called because it frequents corn-fields. See crake.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A bird (Crex crex or Crex pratensis) which frequents grain fields; the European crake or land rail; -- called also corn bird.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A bird of the rail family, Crex crex, that breeds in meadows and arable farmland across Europe and western Asia, migrating to Africa in winter.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun common Eurasian rail that frequents grain fields

Etymologies

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Examples

  • 'Those birds are provided by God for man, but the corncrake is a wild bird of the woods: and not he alone; many they are, the wild things of the woods and the fields, and the wild things of the rivers and marshes and moors, flying on high or creeping below; and a sin it is to slay them: let them live their allotted life upon the earth.

    A Sportsman's Sketches Works of Ivan Turgenev, Volume I Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev 1850

  • Although I had often heard of the "corncrake" or landrail of the British

    The Call Of The South 1908 Louis Becke 1884

  • ‘Those birds are provided by God for man, but the corncrake is a wild bird of the woods: and not he alone; many they are, the wild things of the woods and the fields, and the wild things of the rivers and marshes and moors, flying on high or creeping below; and a sin it is to slay them: let them live their allotted life upon the earth.

    A Sportsman's Sketches 2003

  • The avifauna includes black stork Ciconia nigra, white stork Ciconia ciconia, golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos, greater spotted eagle A. clanga (VU), white-tailed eagle Haliaetus albicilla, great snipe Gallinaga media, corncrake Crex crex, eagle owl Bubo bubo. great grey owl Strix nebulosa and Eurasian curlew Numenius arquata.

    Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, Belarus 2009

  • A shambling family of starlings on Coll in May, debauched and chaotic and moaning about winter, above a corncrake still stoking up the year with its crex crex song “endorsing summer” as Louis MacNeice says, with the “sourdine in their throat” as Andrew Marvell says;

    A Year on the Wing TIM DEE 2009

  • The globally threatened wattled crane Grus carunculatus (VU), corncrake Crex crex (VU), and lesser kestrel Falco naumanni (VU) occur.

    Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania 2008

  • Other threatened birds include lesser kestral (Falco naumanni), corncrake (Crex crex), and aquatic warbler (Acrocephalus paludicola).

    Central European mixed forests 2008

  • Other wintering wetland birds include the threatened marbled teal Marmoronetta angustirostris, ferruginous duck Aythya nyroca, and corncrake, Crex crex; also high numbers of green-winged teal Anas crecca, northern pintail Anas acuta, northern shoveler Anas clypeata and black-winged stilt Himantopus himantopus.

    Ichkeul National Park, Tunisia 2008

  • These include: wattled crane (Grus carunculatus, VU), slaty egret (Egretta vinaceigula, VU), corncrake (Crex crex, VU).

    Central Zambezian Miombo woodlands 2007

  • These include wattled crane (Grus carunculatus, VU), corncrake (Crex crex, VU), and lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni, VU).

    Eastern Miombo woodlands 2007

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