340 BULLETIN 135^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



''bonnets," "lettuce" and pond lilies grew we saw the purple gallinules, 

 together with their more common relatives the Florida gallinules and 

 coots. We were thrilled with the striking beauty of this handsome 

 species, as we saw for the first time its brilhant colors in its native 

 haunts. One can not mistake it as it flies feebly along just over the 

 tops of the "bonnets" with its long yellow legs dangling. And how 

 gracefully and Hghtly it walks over the lily pads, supported by its 

 long toes, nodding and bowing with a dovelike motion and flirting 

 the white flag in its tail. 

 Arthur T. Wayne (1910) says of this species in South CaroUna: 



This beautiful and graceful summer resident is locally abundant during the 

 breeding season on abandoned rice plantations, and also on fresh-water rivers 

 where the wampee (Pontcdcria cordata) grows in profusion. This plant bears 

 purplish blue flowers which act as a protective coloration to this species. Where 

 the plant is growing in profusion the gallinules are always most abundant, but 

 where it is absent scarcely more than one or two pairs can be found. The birds 

 generally arrive between April 10 and 17, and are common by the 25th. 



Nesting. — We failed to find the purple gallinules' nests in the St. 

 Johns marshes because we did not know where to look for them; but 

 in 1925, with the help of Oscar E. Baynard, I learned something of 

 its nesting habits, for we found it breeding in two places. He taught 

 me to look for the nests on the floating islands, with a high, dense 

 growth of herbaceous vegetation rather than in the pickerel weed or 

 "bonnets." They seem to like to have the nesting site surrounded 

 by deep water. In a marshy pond in Pasco County, while we were 

 watching some Florida gallinules, we saw a pair of purple galUnules 

 near some patches of rank vegetation that looked promising. The 

 pond looked shallow enough to wade, for it was overgrown with 

 pickerel weed around the borders and covered with "bonnets" in the 

 center, with numerous clumps of cat-tails, willows and " ty-ty " bushes 

 scattered over it. But we soon found tnat it was too deep to wade; 

 and so we made another visit to it with a boat on April 25. We 

 examined several emptj^ nests on the larger, boggy, or floating islands 

 of cat-tails, pickerel weed, grasses, and other rank vegetation, one of 

 which was 2 feet above the water in a small bunch of the flags. And 

 we finally found a nest containing six nearly fresh eggs ; it was in a 

 small bunch of isolated cat-tail flags in an open place surrounded 

 by deep water, overgrown with "bonnets" and white pond lilies; the 

 nest was a floating mass of dead flags, soggy and wet below, but dry 

 above and well hollowed in the center, which was only a few inches 

 above the water, exceptionally low for this species; the flags were 

 arched over the top of the nest, which only partially concealed it. 



The following day, April 26, we found two nests, each with six eggs, 

 in which incubation had begun, in an arm of Lake Apopka, in Lake 

 County^. This arm of the lake is about a mile or more long and 



