202 



BIRDS OF AMERICA 



the glades. The nests are made chiefly of such 

 varieties of twigs and leaves as are obtainable 

 in the neighborhood. From four to seven brown 

 spotted eggs are laid. 



Limpkins at times are very noisy creatures. 

 Their usual call possesses a quality of unutter- 

 able sadness, as though the bird was opi)ressed 

 beyond measure by the desolateness of its sur- 

 roundings. For this reason the name " Crying- 

 bird " is usually given them by the natives. In 

 the spring and early summer they largely haunt 

 the swampy shores of streams and lakes, but in 

 the autumn they gather in great numbers in the 

 more open savannas. Thousands thus pass the 

 winter months on the pond-covered ]irairies 

 about the headwaters of the Caloosahatchee 

 River, west of Lake Okechobee. The Limpkin 

 is highly esteemed for food, but owing to the 

 difliculties of hunting them in their retreats there 

 is strong likelihood of the species persisting in 

 Florida for many years to come. 



A few years ago many were to be found in the 

 swampy country of northern Florida, within 

 fifteen or twenty miles of the Georgia line, and 

 two or three specimens have even been taken in 

 South Carolina. T. Gilbert Pearson. 



Courtesy of Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. 

 LIMPKIN 

 A long-legged wading bird of Florida and tropical America 



RAILS, GALLINULES, AND COOTS 



Order Paludicolcc ; suborder Ralli ; family Rallidcs 



BOUT fifty genera, embracing one hundred and eighty species constitute this 

 family, the /?a//;J(r, which inckides the Rails (/^a/Z/'ncr), Gallinules {Gallimdincc), 

 and Coots (Fulicincr) . The distribution of these birds is virtually cosmopolitan, 

 and abotit fifteen species occur, regularly or casually, in North America. They 

 are from small to fair-sized birds, with noticeably compressed bodies, — well 

 adapted to rapid progress through thickly growing reeds and rtishes, — long 

 necks, small heads, short, rounded wings, short tails, and long, strong legs and 

 feet. The bill is short and henlike in the Coots and Gallinules, but long and 

 slightly curved toward the end in the Rails. The plumage is subdued and 

 blended in color. A family peculiarity is that of running, rather than flying, 

 to escape danger, a trait apparently responsible for the extermination of certain 

 species which had lost the power of flight through disuse of the wings, and the steady diminu- 

 tion of others for the same reason. 



" Rails and Gallinules are marsh birds, very secretive in habits, keeping well under cover 

 of the dense rushes and grasses, except at night or in the twilight, when they venture out on 

 the mudd}/^ shores. When silently floating along the marshy stream, one may often see them 

 standing motionless near their favorite coverts, or walking deliberately along the margin 

 flirting their upturned tails and bobbing their necks in henlike fashion. Their cries are 

 also loud, and remind one of the different notes of our domestic fowl. Consequently all 

 our species of the family, from the Virginia Rail to the Coot, have received the common name 

 of Mud Hens. The flight of Rails and Gallinules is feeble and hesitating. They usually 

 take wing as a last resort, and then proceed with dangling legs, in a direct course, low over 



