NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 351 



young gallinules are able to leave the nest soon af tei* they are hatched 

 and are well able to take care of themselves at an early age. There 

 is a sharp spur at the bend of the wing, which the young bird uses 

 to assist it in climbing among the reeds and Hly pads. Audubon 

 (1840) gives the best account of the early Ufe of the young birds, as 

 follows: 



The females are as assiduous in their attentions to their young as the wild 

 turkey hens; and, although the young take to the water as soon as hatched, the 

 mother frequently calls them ashore, when she nurses and dries them under her 

 body and wings. In this manner she looks after them until they are nearly a 

 month old, when she abandons them and begins to breed again. The young, 

 which are covered with hairy, shining, black down, swim beautifully, jerking their 

 heads forward at each movement of their feet. They seem to grow surprisingly 

 fast, at the age of 6 or 7 weeks are strong, active, and perhaps as well able to 

 elude their enemies as the old birds are. Their food consists of grasses, seeds, 

 water-insects, worms, and snails, along with which they swallow a good deal of 

 sand or gravel. They walk and run over the broad leaves of water lilies as if on 

 land, dive if necessary, and appear at times to descend into the water in search 

 of food, although I can not positively assert that they do so. On more than one 

 occasion, I have seen a flock of these young birds playing on the surface of the 

 water like ducks, beating it with their wings, and splashing it about in a curious 

 manner, when their gambols would attract a garfish, which at a single dart would 

 seize one of them and disappear. The rest affrighted would run as it were with 

 inconceivable velocity on the surface of the water, make for the shore, and there 

 lie concealed and silent for a quarter of an hour or so. In the streams and ponds 

 of the Floridas, this species and some others of similar habits, suffer greatly from 

 alligators and turtles, as well as from various kinds of fish, although, on account 

 of their prolific nature, they are yet abundant. 



Plumages. — The downy young Florida gallinule is nearly bald, the 

 crown being very scantily covered with black hairlike down ; the skin 

 at the base of the bill is bright red; the black down on the chin and 

 throat is tipped with curly wliitish hairs ; and the rest of the body is 

 covered with thick, soft, black down, glossed with greenish above and 

 dull sooty black below. 



The body plumage is acquired at an early age, but the young 

 bird is fully half grown before the wings and tail have even started 

 to grow; these are not fully developed until the bird is fully grown, 

 in September. In the full juvenal plumage, of late summer, the 

 throat and chin are white, mottled with blackish; the remainder of 

 the head and neck varies from "hair brown" above to smoke gray 

 below; the mantle is much Uke that of the adult, "Front's brown" 

 to "cinnamon brown;" the under parts are "neutral grays," mix«d 

 with white; and the central belly is all white. This plumage is worn 

 through the fall with a gradual progress, by molt, towards maturity. 

 By December the young bird is much like the adult; but traces of 

 immaturity, chiefly white in the throat, persist until spring and the 

 frontal shield remains rudimentary all through the first year. At the 

 first postnuptial molt, the following summer, the fully adult plumage 



