BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



151 



On June 3, 1868, in the Brickyard Swamp, I came upon a bird which, at 

 the time, I supposed to be a Coot, but which I afterwards decided must have 

 been a Florida Gallinule. It was swimming in a ditch bordered by bushes into 

 which it retreated soon after discovering me. Probably it had a mate and nest 

 hard by, for early the following autumn Mr. Ruthven Deane and I found several 

 young Gallinules (two of which we shot) in Muskrat Pond,' a small, reed- 

 encircled pool distant only a few hundred yards from the spot where the bird 

 had been seen the previous June. 



No Florida Gallinules are known to have been met with in the Fresh Pond 

 region between the year last mentioned and i88q when, on several occasions in 

 early June, Mr. Walter Faxon and I heard one calling in the extensive marshes 

 north of the Glacialis. The next year certainly two and perhaps three pairs of 

 Gallinules passed the summer in this neighborhood, and, on June 5, we found one 

 of their nests. Since 1891 old birds have been frequently seen or heard in the 

 Fresh Pond Marshes in May and June, and young in September and October.' 

 There are also reasons for believing that the Florida Gallinule has bred at Great 

 Meadow within the past ten years. It is one of the most retiring and elusive of 

 all swamp-loving birds, and its presence may be easily overlooked by those who 

 are not familiar with its varied and peculiar notes. Its favorite haunts are exten- 

 sive beds of rank, matted cattail flags, in which it remains closely concealed dur- 

 ing the day, but at early morning and just after sundown it often ventures out 

 into open water where it swims about with nodding head and neck, much after 

 the manner of a Coot. 



The nest mentioned above contained twelve eggs, some of which were quite 

 fresh, others far advanced in incubation. It was placed in a half-submerged 

 thicket of bushes (chiefly Spircea sa/icifolia, var. latifolid) in a flooded meadow 

 near Pout Pond. With the exception of a little dry tussock grass, which formed 

 the lining, it was composed wholly of dead, sodden cattail flags some of which 

 were nearly two feet in length and an inch thick at the base. Although 

 apparently floating on the surface of the water, which was twelve or fifteen inches 

 in depth, it evidently derived its chief support from the stems of the bushes 

 among which it was firmly wedged. Owing partly to its pale, bleached coloring, 

 but largely, also, to the slight shelter afforded by the thin foliage of the dying 

 bushes, the nest was so conspicuous an object that it attracted my attention at a 

 distance of fully twenty-five feet. The birds had been seen in the meadow for 

 two weeks or more before this nest was found, and after it was taken they con- 

 tinued to frequent the place, probably laying again, although, as we did not care 

 to disturb them further, we made no search for their second nest.- 



' Dr. J. A. Allen was mistaken in giving the locality as Fresh Pond. See American Naturalist, 

 III, 1870, 639. 



2W. Brewster, Auk, VIII, 1S91, 1-7. 



