THE SORA RAIL 



By EDWARD HOWE FORBUSH 



Cfie jl^ational association of Studubon Societies 



EDUCATIONAL LEAFLET No. 75 



In the marsh the wilderness makes its last stand. Civilization sweeps away 

 the forest, dams and diverts the streams, cultivates prairie, hill, and meadow, 

 traverses the pond in boats, and destroys the native birds and mammals, 

 but the marsh remains unconquered to the last. Along the Atlantic seaboard, 

 where agriculture and civilization have held sway for hundreds of years, 

 stretches of marshland yet extend even within the corporate limits of large 

 cities; and many of the shy creatures that inhabited them when Columbus 

 discovered America still maintain their homes among the reeds. Here the 

 great snapping-turtle drags its slow length along, here the Bittern may be 

 heard "driving its stake," and here the Rail peers from its age-old fastness — 

 the cover of reeds, flags, and sedges. Man dislikes the quaking bog and the 

 miry ooze, and so it remains a refuge for the light-footed and defenseless ones 

 that can run over its shuddering expanse or crawl in its mud and water. 



Rushes, sedges, and wa\dng cat-tails, and lush w^ater-plants in wild pro- 

 fusion, form a curtain screening the private life of the Rails from human view. 

 We hear sounds from behind this screen, and now and then a 

 ^ ,, , "Mud-hen" peeps out; and so we have come to associate them 



the Marsh f f ^ 



with the steaming summer morass, the pond-weeds, pickerel- 

 weed, and the lily-pads over which, light of weight and splay-footed, they can 

 run at will. Some of their notes are such as might be expected to come from 

 a frog-breeding morass; others are as sweet and wild as those of the Whip- 

 poor-will or the Solitary Vireo. Rails have some notes that resemble and 



harmonize with the frog-chorus, such as krek, krek, kuk, kuk, 

 Its Notes kuk, and others more subdued and varied. I may venture to 



assert that no man yet has fully identified all the notes of all 

 the species of American Rails, and probably no one man ever will. I have 

 heard many notes in the marshes that I could not identify. In 1889, William 

 Brewster devoted most of his time for two weeks to an attempt to see a sup- 

 posed Rail that was heard calling in the Cambridge marshes. He never saw 

 it, and the voice is still a mystery, although it has been heard many times 

 since and in other places. This bird may have been a Yellow Rail, but I have 

 twice heard a wonderful solo from the marshes, partly original, and partly 



in seeming imitation of other birds, which, from its quality, I 

 Sings like a . ; > n ^ ? 



Pj.Qg can attribute only to the Sora. TJiis "song" was kept up 



intermittently for several hours, and showed great versatility; 



some of the notes were frog-like, but most of them were like those of a bird. 



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