374 Simmons, The Louisiana Clapper Rail. [j^Jiy 



Gallinule eggs, but which on closer inspection proved somewhat 

 different from any Galhnule eggs I had ever seen; I was indeed 

 puzzled to make out what they were. The nest was built of flags 

 and long marsh grass of the same hue as the eggs (brownish buffy), 

 and was built up solid from the ground about seven inches in a 

 green clump of the tall marsh grass which in some manner had 

 withstood the heat of the summer sun. There were four dirty, 

 cracked eggs in the nest, a few pieces of shell on the ground, and 

 about ten feet away was a dead young bird half out of the shell. 

 I picked the latter up to examine it, but dropped it immediately 

 to take a firm hold on my nose and return to the nest, more inter- 

 esting to me just then. Taking the four eggs up one at a time and 

 placing them to my ear, I listened and heard in two of them faint 

 squeaks like the note emitted by a newly hatched domestic chick. 

 On the ground about the nest and in the nest were a few small 

 breast feathers which attracted my attention by their oddity. 

 Each feather was brown on the tip for a half inch, the remainder 

 of the feather being of an ashy hue. A typical water bird feather, 

 each vein being separate and apart from the next vein, and- not 

 joined as in a quill. They certainly were not Gallinule feathers; 

 what were they? 



"Still puzzled as to what bird the nest might belong, and not 

 once thinking of the rails which I had seen feeding in the vicinity 

 on previous trips, I went on west across the tract to where the 

 second clump of persimmon trees grew about a hundred yards away. 

 A barbed-wire fence separated the two clumps, running diagonally 

 across the marsh. 



"About twenty feet away from the nearest persimmon tree in 

 the second clump and still about ten feet from the fence, I flushed 

 a large, brown, and slow-flying bird which I saw at once was a 

 Louisiana Clapper Rail. Flying about a hundred yards, she (for 

 I took it to be the female) lit in the tall grass without uttering a 

 sound. After following her flight with my eyes I turned my atten- 

 tion to the ground from whence she flew and saw a nest similar to 

 the one containing the four eggs. This nest, however, contained 

 eleven eggs, duplicates of the first four but having a much cleaner 

 and fresher appearance. The nest was a mass of material ten 

 inches high, cunningly concealed in a tall clump of the high marsh 

 grass, and built of the same material as nest No. 1. 



