Vol. XXXlj Simmons, The Louisiana Clapper Rail. 369 



the hunter, but in summer these marshes are abandoned to the 

 rails, Mottled Ducks and Herons. 



Further inland from the coast, throughout this strip of coast 

 prairie, are numbers of shallow ponds overgrown with reeds and 

 sedge, and spots where tall grass and reeds grow over several 

 inches of water. The few persimmon trees that are found on this 

 prairie grow in such wet spots and offer admirable nesting sites 

 for numbers of the smaller birds of the locality. 



My favorite spot for the Louisiana Clapper Rail is a small Red- 

 winged Blackbird colony about six miles south of the court house 

 in Houston, being a mere damp spot on the prairie covering about 

 two acres, and overgrown with tall grass and sedge. Two small 

 clumps of persimmon trees grow in this marsh, one at either end. 

 About fifty yards east is a railroad track, which here runs south- 

 ward for a short distance and then westward across Texas to San 

 Antonio. Though trains rattle and snort past several times a day, 

 the birds do not seem at all disturbed. 



In the persimmon trees nest the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, King- 

 bird, Orchard Oriole, Florida Red-wing and Western Mourning 

 Dove, with more Red-wings and a nesting pair of Maryland 

 Yellow-throats in the tall marsh grass. Though fully twenty-two 

 miles from Galveston Bay and fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico, 

 this salt marsh might be termed a typical salt marsh, for here nested 

 a pair of Texas Seaside Sparrows, and not a mile off to the south a 

 nest of the Mottled Duck with eleven eggs was found in another 

 such a marsh. The pestiferous Dwarf Cowbird completes the list 

 of breeding birds of this marsh, for never a year passes but what the 

 nest of the Orioles contains one or two eggs of this bird. 



V. General Activities. 



Throughout the coast region of Texas the Clapper Rails are 

 known as "Marsh Hens," and are well known to the more experi- 

 enced hunters as denizens of the marshes and rice fields. Even 

 when common in a locality they are often overlooked on account of 

 their secretive habits and reluctance to taking wing to escape 

 danger. 



