THE VIRGINIA RAIL. 445 
GIVEN an oasis of water of, say, two acres extent in a pasture desert 
of barren green; crowd a company of water elms into one end; add a halt 
acre of bogs crowned with rose bushes; then a little space of clear water; 
than a jungle of cat-tails at the other end; surround the whole with a thirty- 
foot border of sedges and coarse grasses cropped close on the desert side, 
and you have an ideal home for the Virginia Rail and his kind. Poke about 
carefully in the edge of the rose-bog and you will soon start him, a sly reddish 
brown bird with a red eye and a longish beak. See him some ten feet away 
standing at the edge of cover, all alert, one foot uplifted and with claws curled 
down; or when he plants it gingerly, he alternately perks and lowers his head, 
as tho divided in his mind between darting away and facing it out with you. 
Simultaneously he cocks his tail forward and relaxes it nervously. If you 
succeed in looking sufficiently disinterested, he will snatch a slug hastily and 
watch you furtively with a blood-red eye, to note whether you approve of 
such actions. If you pass all the tests of good behavior during the first five 
minutes, the gentle bird will relax his vigilance and show you how he can 
walk over half-submerged vegetation without sinking very deep himself, or 
if in the passage from bog to bog he comes to a space of clear brown water, 
he will swim as 
lightly as a duck. 
but with that odd 
bobbing — motion 
peculiar to his 
race. A_ single 
false motion, how- 
ever, will send him 
SCM will an oO ai 
through the plant- 
stems and out of 
sight in a twink- 
ling, cackling in 
alarm and = dud- 
geon. 
Swamp noises 
are difficult to de- Taken in Lorain County. Photo by the Author. 
scribe. A verbal ANOTHER “NEEDLE IN A HAY-STACK.” 
transcri pe A FEMALE VIRGINIA RAIL IS SITTING ON HER NEST NEAR THE CENTER OF THE 
< f PICTURE AND WITHIN FOUR FEET OF THE CAMERA BUT THE SCREEN 
tion serves for lit- OF REEDS AND HER OWN PROTECTIVE COLORS 
tle more than to RENDER HER INVISIBLE. 
recall to the writer a sound he has once heard. About all that one can safely 
say is that both the Virginia and Sora Rails have call and alarm notes which 
are characteristic and mutually distinctive. Virginia’s alarm has been com- 
