290 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



behind the adult, their numbers usually lessening rapidly as days go by, from 

 toll levied by their numerous predatory neighbors, which include fish crows, some 

 of the smaller hawks, snakes, and turtles. While the old bird at this time is 

 solicitous for her charge, she is not hurried in her actions. At other seasons of 

 the year and under normal feral conditions the movements of the adult bird are 

 stately, graceful, and attractive. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range.— '^onrmgT&toTy. The range of the Florida clapper rail 

 extends from extreme southeastern Alabama (Perdido Bay), along 

 the Gulf coast of Florida (St. Marks, mouth of the Suwanee River, 

 Cedar Keys, Anclote Keys, Tarpon Springs, Clearwater, Tampa 

 Bay, Charlotte Harbor to near Fort Myers). It probably breeds 

 throughout this range although the occurrence in Alabama is based 

 upon a single specimen (Howell) and was possibly a wanderer. 



Egg (Za^es.— Florida: 18 records, April 18 to July 30; 9 records, 

 May 6 to 26. 



RALLUS LONGIROSTRIS WAYNEI Brewster 



WAYNE CLAPPER RAIL 



HABITS 



The clapper rails of the Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to 

 Florida, have been designated as a subspecies under the above name. 

 This subspecies seems to be of doubtful value; the characters on 

 which it is separated are a generally darker color, more ashy under 

 parts and under tail-coverts with fewer markings; at best it seems 

 to be only intermediate between crepitans and scotti; and if we are 

 to recognize intermediate races in nomenclature there will be no end 

 of splitting. 



Dr. Louis B. Bishop (1904) describes the haunts of this rail, as fol- 

 lows: 



With this bird I have become well acquainted at Pea Island on the coast of 

 North Carolina. Pamlico Sound is separated from the Atlantic by a belt of drift- 

 ing sand and mud flats, that broadens in places sufficiently to support trees and 

 bushes, and narrows in others to but the ocean beach backed by a mile of sandy 

 flats, where may frequently, be seen in position the stumps of trees that grew there 

 in past centuries. The sound side of this belt is bordered here and there by 

 meadows of salt marsh, some of these quite similar to the wetter marshes of the 

 New England coast, and covered like them with a coarse grass or sedge, while 

 others are densely grown with rushes evidently closely related to those that 

 compose the salt marshes of western Florida. These marshes are the home of 

 Wayne's rail, and at evening or in cloudy weather you will hear their harsh 

 cackle, and occasionally see one of the birds walking along the margin of an inlet, 

 ready to run quickly to the grass at the slightest sign of danger. In winter 

 apparently the great majority go farther south, the true clapper rail occurring at 

 this season in about equal numbers; but in May the marshes are filled with these 

 birds and the clapper rail is rare. 



