NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 319 



herbage. Herein lies the supreme cunning of yellow rails. In the majority of 

 cases noted, then, the nesting sites of this rail have been where the hayrake 

 of the previous year has dropped a small wisp of hay. This fact has led to suc- 

 cess in the nest finding, when once the trick has been learned. One had only to 

 traverse the cleanmown areas and examine every likely wisp of dead grass; and 

 ultimately the nest would be found. Under some one of such, and that, usually, 

 the most unlikely one of a hundred or more, would be the place where has lurk- 

 ed a most neat and elaborate nest. The most wonderful fabricjof all was found, 

 on June, years ago, after both skill and insight had become evolved. Amid 

 coarse-grass bogs, 100 feet and over from the springstream, there stood one bog, 

 a bit apart from the rest. The water about it was rather deep. On top of this 

 grass tussock was a bit of the dead grass of the previous year. This I tore away, 

 finding beneath a nest of unusual perfection. It was of the usual diameter — 

 about o inches — -but thicker — an inch and a half. Most wonderful the structure 

 of it. Every blade of the fine grasses that composed it had been brought from 

 far, and carried upward, from the side of the tussock into the top, through a 

 small hole but little larger than a mouse hole. Every yellow-rail nest of my 

 finding has been of this general character: About 1 inch thick; made of the finest 

 possible grasses; and between 4 and 5 inches in diameter. The cupping of the 

 nests is never so broad as with other rails; just because, one must presume, fewer 

 eggs are to be placed within it. 



Two nests, out of a dozen, found by Fred Maltby (1915), are 

 somewhat different; he describes them as foUows: 



Xest No. 8 which I found on June 24 was out in the Big Coulee. I was cross- 

 ing a little hay meadow from which the hay had been removed in 1899, when I 

 caught sight of egg shells lying on the ground. Examination showed them to 

 be those of the yellow rail from which the young had hatched. In another 

 moment I spied the nest. There was no dead grass here and the green blades 

 had been pulled down and fastened about the nest, thus forming a green screen 

 over it. The nest was a rather thin affair of dead blades, placed on the damp 

 ground. I had been under so strong an impression that the nests of these birds 

 would be found only in places where there was plenty of dead grass to afford 

 concealment that I hadn't thought of searching the "cleaner" areas. 



Nest No. II was my lucky find. After I had about given up hope, in the 

 outskirts of the meadow, outside the damper, soggier portion, I suddenly found 

 myself looking down upon a beautiful set of nine eggs. The nest was of coarse, 

 dead blades mostly, and placed upon the ground in a rather thick bunch of grow- 

 ing grass. There was no dead grass about and no canopj' over the nest, the ends 

 of the green blades simply hanging loosely together a foot or more above it. 



A most sui'prising discovery was the finding of a yellow rail's nest 

 in Long Valley, Mono County, California, on June 6, 1922, by W. 

 Jjeon Dawson (1922); he relates the experieiKJO, as follows: 



We were dragging a rather thin stretch of marsh grass when a Jack Snipe 

 flushed and I called Stevens to my assistance, leaving Bobby, who was more 

 remote, standing listlessly by his rope-end. Returning from a fruitless quest we 

 were about to resume operations when Bobby exclaimed, "Well, look at this!'' 

 He had been standing all the while within 3 feet of a low-lying cushion which 

 held, in a compact and perfect circle, eight fresh eggs. The cover of marsh grass 

 was scanty, not over 18 inches high, and the water shallow — an inch or so — yet 

 there was no trace of a bird about. The eggs were different— no doubt of that; 

 much smaller than those of a sora, which we had, fortunately, just examined; of 



