320 Simmons, Nesting of Texan Birds. I July 



On June 6 1 made another trip to the pond last mentioned, and discovered 

 a third nest, similar to the first two, a nest that I had doubtless overlooked 

 in my hurried search of the previous trip. This nest was wider but not so 

 thick as the others, and was resting on several water plants of the lily 

 family, almost flush with the water. It was well hidden by thick reeds and 

 grasses, and had apparently already been used. 



Ionornis martinica. Purple Gallinule. — A fairly common sum- 

 mer resident about the marshy ponds of the open coastal prairie, but I 

 never found a nest until the season of 1914. 



May 30, in the same pond with the nest and five eggs of the Least Bittern, 

 I flushed one of these Gallinules from a nest containing five well incubated 

 eggs. The nest itself was about eight inches in diameter, three and a 

 quarter inches thick, and about ten inches above the water. It was 

 placed in an isolated clump of rushes on the edge of the open water at the 

 center of the pond, the water at that point being about thirty inches deep. 



The living tules or rushes of the clump composed about half of the nesting 

 material, the stalks being broken and bent over and the nest resting on 

 these. The nest was composed of buffy rushes, loosely woven into a slightly 

 concave mass. 



The five eggs measured: 1.60 X 1.10; 1.53 X 1.08; 1.52 X 1.08; 1.50 X 

 1.07; and 1.47 X 1.09. 



On this trip, as well as on the next (June 6), I carefully searched all of 

 the ponds in the vicinity, and found several nests that had already been 

 used, as well as numbers of platforms that were evidently ' shams.' In one 

 pond in particular, I found at least ten of these platforms about ten feet 

 apart; they were all formed by the tops of the saw grass and rushes being 

 bent over or broken and interlaced. From the fact that each of these 

 platforms was stained by the white excreta of the bird, I am led to believe 

 that the buds use them as perches during the night so as to be safe from the 

 depredations of the smaller mammals inhabiting the region. 



Gallinula galeata. Florida Gallinule. — But once have I found a 

 nest of this Gallinule. On May 28, 1910, while examining a number of 

 nests of the Florida Red-wing in the tall reeds and grasses on the edge of a 

 lagoon in the San Jacinto bottoms, adjacent to Galveston Bay, I observed 

 a platform of grasses and reeds about six inches in height. There the 

 water was about a foot deep, while the grasses and rushes grew nearly as 

 high as one's head. 



Seeing this platform set me to searching and I soon found several more, 

 all empty. And then, as I was about to give up the search, I flushed the 

 Gallinule from a clump of tall rushes and grasses. The nest was cunningly 

 concealed over but three inches of water, and built up ten inches above it ; 

 a slightly concave mass about nine and a half inches in diameter and four 

 inches thick, and loosely composed of rushes, reeds and saw grass. It was 

 entirely surrounded by reeds, with but one open side. Since that date I 

 have never returned to the locality. 



The six eggs in this nest measured: 1.77 X 1.27; 1.76 X 1.26; 1.75 X 

 1.25; 1.73 X 1.26; 1.72 X 1.27; and 1.67 X 1.23. 



