286 BULLETIN 135^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



During the mating season in March, at which time they congregate in small 

 flocks, Mr. Pope says that the birds became very noisy, especially late in the af- 

 ternoon and about dusk. At the start of the nesting season, however, they quieted 

 down. While I was examining nest No. 2 the parent bird now and then 

 uttered a note which resembled the "keck" of the red-winged blackbird. At 

 times during the early part of the breeding season I have stopped to watch adult 

 rails which appeared very ill at ease. The note uttered under these conditions 

 is a hoarse grunting noise sounding like "bruck" or " gruck." The newly hatched 

 young have a constant, but very faint twitter, and a note reminding me, as stated 

 before, of the "cheap" of a tiny domestic chick. 



Enemies. — Evidently the clapper rails of Texas are disappearing, 

 owing to the same causes as prevail elsewhere, for Mr. Simmons (1914) 

 writes: 



Once common, the birds are rapidly becoming scarce. If protection is not 

 afl'orded them at once they will soon be wiped out entirely. Hunters kill num- 

 bers of them during the hunting season. In fact, it is one of the easiest of the 

 water birds to secure on the wing, and therefore is one of the first to be shot by 

 the amateur marksman. Mr. Pope observed that numbers of them fell victims to 

 steel traps which he had set in the pathways of the mink in the marshes near 

 Flake. These rails caught in the traps were usually devoured by mink if caught 

 in the night, and most of those caught were taken then. The majority of the 

 nests located by Mr. Pope in the Bolivar marshes in 1912 were usually found 

 destroyed before the sets of eggs were complete, probably by mink, raccoon, 

 or opossum, as tracks of these animals were in evidence in the immediate vicin- 

 ity of the several nests. The eggs remaining in the nests or on the ground near- 

 by had the appearance of having been sucked. 



Probably the greatest factor the rails have to contend with in their fight for 

 existence is the flooding of the marshes, both from high tide and from heavy 

 rains. At such times the birds are much exposed and bewildered and many 

 drown. In the seaside marshes they build their nests on the banks of the 

 sloughs or bayous instead of the higher parts of the marsh, and in rainy spells 

 numbers of nests are destroyed. They are naturally very delicate birds and 

 sensitive to the cold of the more severe winters; many freeze to death where 

 they are unable to secure shelter. During November and December 1913 Texas 

 was visited by one of the most destructive floods of its history, two of the larg- 

 est rivers of the State rising and overflowing miles and miles of the lowlands 

 towards the coast. During that time numbers of the rails left the marshes and 

 took to higher ground until the waters receded. One of these birds was caught 

 in a bewildered condition in Mr. Farley's yard in Port Aransas in October. 



Winter — Of the winter habits of these rails, he says : 



In the colder weather they haunt drifts of logs or trash in the marshes, where 

 they take shelter from the cold north wind and from rains. But as the ther- 

 mometer rarely falls below freezing in this semitropical coast country, the birds 

 are rarely forced to seek shelter, and their actions and habits then are not notice- 

 ably different from other times of the year. In winter in the marshes on Bolivar 

 Peninsula Mr. Pope says that the birds were fully as common in winter as in 

 summer, if not more so. In traveling through the grass the birds had well-beaten 

 paths about 6 inches wide, and from the way these paths were beaten out in the 

 vicinity of the bayous, it would appear that the birds were much more common. 



