13 



able to support its weight. It is very tame and unsuspicious for 

 so large a bird, always, as far as my experience goes, allowing 

 itself to be approached within gunshot, not hiding or running like 

 a rail, but standing in the same place, and bobbing its head up 

 and down like a sandpiper. On taking wing it utters a loud 

 cluck, and if a tree is in the neighborhood generally alights on it, 

 sometimes even fifty feet from the ground ; but if not, it generally 

 alights in some thick part of the marsh, and is not easily started 

 again. On the 8t. Johns it feeds principally on a species of 

 Natica, which is extremely abundant, and also on the small Unios. 

 The large green snail, so common in the everglade, is not very 

 often met with on the St. Johns. Its manner of feeding is to hold 

 the shell in one of its feet, and then with a few blows of its pow- 

 erful bill to detach the animal, which it immediately swallows. All 

 the specimens I killed had the stomach filled with the more or 

 less digested remains of various mollusks — principally Unios. I 

 have never seen any of these birds swimming, like the Gallinules, 

 though they undoubtedly can do so. The common note of this bird 

 is the most disagreeable of any of our native birds, and resembles 

 more that of the peacock than that of any other bird I am acquainted 

 with ; it is if anything more powerful, and equally harsh and dis- 

 agreeable. It is very fond of uttering it. Besides this, which I 

 presume is the call-note, it makes a number of other sounds, all 

 of the most inharmonious description, but of which I can con- 

 vey no correct idea. 



Incubation commences generally in February ; the few nests 

 which I saw were made on low willows. In Spring Garden Lake 

 I saw four, on one small island about fifty feet in diameter. The 

 number of eggs is unusually large — fifteen having been taken 

 from one nest by a boy I employed to collect eggs for me. The 

 Courlan is apparently very tenacious of life ; several of those I 

 shot presented extraordinary cases of fracture — one specimen had 

 both humeri united in such a way as to shorten them more than 

 half an inch, at the same time forming a decided angle. The 

 same specimen had also an old fracture of the tibia. It had prob- 

 ably been wounded from the steamboat, it being customary to 

 shoot at any animal large enough to make a fair mark. The 

 flesh is considered good eating by the inhabitants, and it is conse- 

 quently shot whenever an opportunity offers. From its unsus- 



