NOKTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 275 



under a weed iu one of its dives, and its toes became entangled so that it stuck 

 there, and I believe would have drowned. When I thought it was drowned I 

 retrieved it, leaving it on the surface of the water, beak partly submerged, but it 

 gradually regained its faculties and soon started swimming off again at full speed. 



W. Leon Dawson (1923) describes the vocal performances of this 

 species as follows : 



Eventide, also, is the time for that discursive song whicli won for our hero the 

 name "clapper." In a populous marsh one may hear six or seven birds at once 

 uttering these peculiar, strident, iterative calls. The tones are very hard to 

 characterize. Some one, I suppose, must have likened them to the sound of a 

 fence board struck by a stick. To me they sound more like the cheep of a baby 

 blackbird greatly exaggerated. With head and neck stretched vertically, the 

 bird delights to roll out 10 or a dozen of these notes in a series, rallentando 

 sostentuto or rallentando et diminuendo, as the case may be. 



Enemies. — A. B. Howell, who has had considerable experience with 

 these rails, writes to me : 



They used to be common on our marshes, and during the unusually high Dec- 

 ember tides, we would collect as many as we wished, rowing about over the 

 submerged flats and flushing the rails from almost every little grassy clump, in 

 the cover of which they would be paddling about. They were thus hunted by 

 local pothunters as well, until now they are decidedly rare where they were abund- 

 ant half a dozen years ago. They are certainly less well protected, and much less 

 numerous, than the northern bird about San Francisco Bay. In addition, their 

 range is being restricted by reclamation of the marshes, and the future of the 

 subspecies is not at all bright. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — A nonmigratory species, occiiring in the coastal marshes 

 of southern California and the northern part of the western coast of 

 Lower California. 



In California the light-footed rail is found north to Santa Barbara 

 and south along the coast to Wilmington, San Pedro Bay, Long Beach, 

 Newport and San Diego. There is one record of a set of eggs taken 

 in the fresh water marsh of Nigger Slough, Los Angeles County 

 (Willett, 1906). In Lower California the species has been observed 

 or taken principally in the region of San Quintin Bay. 



Egg date.'i. — California: 56 records, March 18 to June 11; 28 

 records, April 9 to May 3. 



RALLUS YUMANENSIS Dickey 



YUMA CLAPPER RAH. 



HABITS 



To Donald II. Dickey (1923) belongs the honor of discovering and 

 the privilege of naming a n(^w rail from a new and unexpected local- 

 ity. He writes that: 



Field work carried on during the spring of 1921 in the Colorado River Valley, 

 Imperial County, California, by Laurence M. Huey and Mrs. May Canlield, in 



