NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRI>S 323 



I quote again from Mr. Peabody, as follows : 



Right here one should emphasize the marvelous acoustic of the clicking of the 

 yellow rail. When heard at a fair distance it seems decidedly nonresonant; but 

 when one listens only a few feet away, this sound has all of the hollow, throaty 

 quality so characteristic of the Virginia rail. This note may be almost perfectly 

 imitated by tapping a hollow beef bone with a bit of iron. The usual rhythmic 



form of the call is, , / , / , , etc. Thus, 



the ordinary motif is in double time, with triplets in the second measures. These 

 iterations are very uniform, though with occasional variations. Now and then 

 a male maj* break into quadruplets toward the end of his half-minute series; 

 while an occasional bird may break the rhythm altogether. But the sound of 

 this clicking carries far. More than once, after toiling the meadow reaches until 

 after dusk, have I set out for my own roosting place a mile away, only to stop, 

 on renewed occasion, to listen to my yellow rails. With a keen wind blowing in 

 the opposite direction, I have distinctly heard the calls, not only from the butte 

 crest, 200 feet above the meadow, but from the prairie, a full quarter-mile away. 



Fall. — Much more is known about the autumnal migration of the 

 yellow rail than about its movements in the spring, probably because 

 more gunners are afield in the fall. Walter H. Rich (1907) says that 

 it is more common in Maine than the Virginia rail; he writes: 



Within the last three years I have known of the capture of possibly 50 speci- 

 mens of the yellow rail near Portland, Maine, and have myself taken at least 

 half that number, while of the Virginia rails scarcely 20 have been killed in the 

 same time. The yellow rail seems to be quite hardy, staying here after the other 

 species have deserted us and the ice has made in the pond holes of the marsh. 

 The writer has shot them when there had been severe cold for November and 

 after a snowfall of 3 or 4 inches. 



Robert O. Morris (1905) has taken a number of yellow rails near 

 Springfield, Massachusetts. He says: 



The place where they were found was wet meadow land covered with wild 

 grass, which in October stood, in places where it had not been harvested, to the 

 height of 2 or 3 feet and harbored many Virginia rails and soras. The grass upon 

 the other part of the land v»^as cut in the summer, and by the middle of October 

 the second growth reached the height of 7 or 8 inches, and in this portion the 

 yellow rails are to be found, they apparently not desiring so thick a cover as do 

 the common kinds. I have flushed all by the aid of a dog, except one, and 

 that rose about 20 feet ahead of me, evidently frightened by my approach. The 

 earliest date in any autumn that I have found them was the 17th of September, 

 and I think that the latest was the 22d of October. In this part of the Con- 

 necticut valley I have been in many meadows of the same character as the one 

 in question, accompanied by a dog educated in such a way that the scent given 

 out by anj' kind of rail would so attract his attention that he would be likely to 

 make known the presence of such a bird, if any were there, but in these places I 

 have never found a yellow rail, and it seems worthy of note that this species 

 should be a regular autunni visitor to a certain piece of meadow land, containing 

 perhaps three acres, and to be found nowhere else in this vicinity at any time. 



Winter. — Very little has been published since Audubon's time on 

 the winter habits of the yellow rail. Arthur T. Wayne (19()5a) once 

 showed me a meadow near his home in which he had taken a number 

 of these birds, of which he writes: 



