104 WATER BIRDS 
if it were not for their notes, the reeds and grasses 
would long keep the secret of their presence. . . . They 
will greet you late in the afternoon with a clear whistled 
keewee which soon comes from dozens of invisible birds 
about you, and long after night has fallen it continues 
like a spring-time chorus of piping hylas. Now and 
again it is interrupted by a high-voiced rolling whinny 
which, like a call of alarm, is taken up and repeated by 
different birds all over the marsh. ‘They seem so ab- 
sorbed in their musical devotions even when calling con- 
tinuously, it requires endless patience and keen eyes to 
see the dull-colored, motionless forms in places where 
one would not suppose there was sufficient growth to 
conceal them.” 
216. BLACK RAIL. — Porzana jamaicensis. 
Famity: The Rails, Gallinules, and Coots. 
Length : 5.00-6.00. 
Adults: Crown blackish slate ; upper parts dark red-brown, speckled 
with white ; under parts, neck, and sides of head slate-color; belly 
sooty brown. 
Downy Young: Uniform black. 
Geographical Distribution ; From northern boundary of the United States 
south to Chili. 
Breeding Range: For the Pacific slope, Oregon and California ; east of 
the Rockies, through the United States. 
Breeding Season: June. 
Nest: Of grasses ; on ground ; in wet meadows or marshes. 
Eggs: 7 to 10; white, thinly spotted with cinnamon. Size 1.05 «0.80. 
Most of us are quite willing to agree with the man 
who said that this bird is “about as difficult to observe 
as a field mouse.” It is its shyness and small size that 
render it so little known to local ornithologists, who con- 
tent themselves with pronouncing it rare. Its nest is a 
