260 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Family RALLIDAE, Rails, Gallinules and Coots 



RALLVS ELEGANS Audubon 

 KING RAIL 



HABITS 



This large, handsome rail is an inhabitant of the freshwater marshes 

 of the interior. It is never seen in the salt marshes of the 

 coast except on migrations or in winter and even then it prefers 

 fresh water. Audubon (1840) has well described its favorite haunts, 

 in the words of his friend Bachman, as follows: 



Wherever there are extensive marshes by the sides of sluggish streams, where 

 the bellowiiigs of the aUigator are heard at intervals, and the pipings of myriads 

 of frogs fill the air, there is found the fresh-water marsh hen, and there it may 

 be seen gliding swiftly among the tangled rank grasses and aquatic weeds, or 

 standing on the broad leaves of the yellow cyamus and fragrant water lily, or 

 forcing its way through the dense foliage of pontederiae and sagittariae. There, 

 during the sickly season, it remains secure from the search of man, and there, on 

 some hillock or little island of the marsh, it builds its nest. In such places I 

 have found so many as 20 pairs breeding within a space having a diameter of 

 30 yards. 



Arthur T. Wayne (1910) says: 



This fine species, which is locally known as the fresh water marsh hen, is 

 abundant on abandoned rice plantations and in ponds of fresh water where there 

 s a dense growth of reeds and water plants. It is a permanent resident, but 

 during protracted droughts is forced to migrate from the ponds in order to procure 

 food and water. On the freshwater rivers it is most numerous, and breeds in 

 numbers. 



C. J. Pennock tells me that in Florida, near St. Marks and about 

 Punta Gorda, the habitats of the two large rails come together, or 

 even overlap, in the marshes of the tidal rivers and creeks. The 

 clapper rails fairly swarm, where the marshes are in wide open areas, 

 even well up the rivers; but, at the first appearance of wooded tracts 

 along these waterways, the clapper rails disappear and are replaced 

 by the king rails. He found the latter nesting regularly in a small 

 pond, near one of these creeks, which was usually fresh, but at high 

 tides it became salty. 



Nesting. — The only nest of a king rail that I have ever seen was 

 shown to me by Oscar E. Baynard, near Plant City, Florida, on 

 March 30, 1925. He had found it while investigating a colony of 

 80 pairs of boat-tailed grackles in an extensive swamp overgrown 

 mainly with pickerel weed (Pontederia) , a scattered growth of small 

 "ty-ty" bushes and a few flags ( Typhm). The nest was in the midst 

 of the colony of grackles, which had nests in the bushes, and was not 

 far from a least bittern's nest. It was beautifully concealed in a 

 thick growth of pickerel weed, which grew all around and over it. 

 It was well made of the dead, dry stems of pickerel weed, and flags anil 



