318 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



eggs; and often beside them are the nests of the ferruginous roughleg. On 

 top of the morainic buttes are scattered granite boulders of varied colors, 

 all enriched by wonderfully varied lichens. Amid all these boulders, blossomed 

 vetches, conefiowers, and puccoons, in glowing tapestries. Here, in this most 

 radiant setting, was the paradisic home of the yellow rails. The faunal condi- 

 tions in the coulee itself were rarely fine for the yellow rails. Everyw^here were 

 wide 'areas of salt grass, alive with appetizing snails. There were great 

 expanses of soft, fine grass, unburned and unmown year by year. Better still 

 as will appear later, there were great expanses of soft, fine grass that were annu- 

 ally mown leaving in spots just the sort of matted flotsam that the yellow rail 

 so dearly loves for its nesting. 



One unusual condition has, I am sure, determined the fitness of the Big Coulee 

 as a breeding place for the yellow rail. Far up on the top of a butte, rising out 

 of a boggy spring pool, there flows a tiny stream of clear, sweet water. Down 

 the slopes the streamlet flows, now losing itself to view amid lush grasses, and, 

 again, pouring itself with noisy babbling over some buried boulder. Across the 

 reach of narrow, coarse-grass meadow it quietly flows among the cowslips and 

 sedges. Onward it meanders into the coulee; here it enlarges by intake; then 

 spreads wideninglj' and sluggishly into the broader expanses. Now there appears 

 a stretch or two of clean sand amid the the alluvial muck. Onward, at last, the 

 stiller waters flow, out into one of the lagoons. No one element of that won- 

 derful coulee is more delightsome than this little stream of clear, cool water, 

 and right here, throughout many of the years of my observation, has been the 

 focal point of the nesting domain of the yellow rail in that famous coulee. No- 

 where else in all that region, during many years, was the yellow rail ever 

 found. 



After the above excellent account of the breeding haunts of the yel- 

 low rail, he gives us, in the same paper, the following description of 

 the nests: 



The first-found nests of the yellow rail on the Big Coulee were all of them 

 placed among coarse grasses. In such cover, then, did I first seek. It is amusing 

 to recall how, although repeatedly warned that one should work his way through 

 the meadow growth with care, lest he crush precious eggs, I should still, near the 

 close of the first day's search, and weary with the unusual exertion, have allow- 

 ed my feet to drag a bit. Then, just at the despair point, I happened to see an 

 egg lying on a bare spot. Stooping to pick it up, I saw that it was what I had 

 been seeking. Assured that a nest was near at hand, I faced about, only to find 

 that the toe of my boot had drawn away the canopy from the cosiest possible 

 nest of a yellow rail. In this case, it was plain that the nest canopy was inci- 

 dental. It was just a mat of dead and partly prone grass, perhaps somewhat 

 moulded by the rail as her nest making went on. Of this character were most 

 of the nest canopies afterward found, in whatsoever sort of matrix the nest proper 

 may have been placed. And yet, the coarse-grass locus is hardly the norm. Of 

 two distinctive types of nest matrix appearing (with water of the same depth in 

 both), I have found the fine-grass type to have been the prevailing one. My 

 second nest, found next morning, was the only one of the entire series in which 

 there has been any evidence of a built-in canopy. This nest was in a fine-grass 

 area, some rods from the former, amid rather scanty- grasses. Water was of 

 about the usual depth favored — 4 inches. The canopy was very slight and the 

 surrounding herbage quite thin. Only two other nests that I now recall were so 

 poorly hidden. In every other case, all nests have been utterly concealed, there 

 being no trace whatever of any artificial moulding of the standing or the prone 



