BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 211 



History. 



The Sora Rail inhabits the same locahties as the Mrginia 

 Rail, but it also frequents the salt or brackish marshes near 

 the mouths of rivers, and the bays and estuaries of the sea. 

 It resorts to these situations in such numbers in Connecticut 

 and the middle and southern States that gunners are enabled 

 to take advantage of its predicament when the tide rises, 

 and by pursuing it in boats they slaughter multitudes. The 

 high water drives the Rails to the highest points on the marsh, 

 and as the gunner in his skiff approaches they take wing. 

 Their flight is so slow and direct that a good shot rarely misses 

 one. Audubon states that he saw a gunner kill fifty Clapper 

 Rails without a miss, and he was assured that another had 

 killed one hundred "straight." 



Dr. Lewis gives a record of the bags of Sora Rails killed 

 by a few men on the Delaware River, below Philadelphia, 

 in 1846. The thirty-four records of consecutive days show 

 an average of about one hundred Rails per man per day. 

 He states that over one thousand Rails were brought into 

 Chester in one day. Dr. Brewer (1884) says that it is not 

 uncommon for an expert marksman to kill from one hundred 

 to one hundred and fifty Rails per day; and such scores were 

 made on the Connecticut River in Connecticut in olden times, 

 when there was no legal limit to the bag. This slaughter has 

 made some inroads on the numbers of the birds in Massa- 

 chusetts. Mr. Robert O. Morris writes that it is said that 

 about one thousand were killed at Longmeadow, near Spring- 

 field, in 1908. 



Five Massachusetts correspondents report the species as 

 increasing in their localities, and forty note a decrease. Mr. 

 Morris is very positive that there has been a great and con- 

 tinuous decrease of Rails along the Connecticut River near 

 Springfield, and I have noticed a similar diminution in fresh- 

 water meadows in eastern Massachusetts. 



The Sora is inclined to nest in more watery portions of 

 the marsh or morass than the Virginia Rail. It is a good 

 swimmer and diver at need, and the young will take to the 



