51�Թ�

She writes: “Try pronouncing it three times, thus: Oryx oryx oryx. Crake crake crake. You see?”

All that is winged, even the grating corn crake, is painted with a mystical birder’s unworldly rose-colored pianistic glasses.

The catalogue includes rare species such as the Henderson crake, which lives on only one small Pacific island.

The Cedar Beach bird was only the second corn crake recorded in New York State since Grover Cleveland was president.

And like the sea they teemed with invisible life: warblers, bitterns, spotted crakes, otters, water voles and marshland insects like reed leopard moths.