2 Brewstfr 071 Florida Galliniilcs. [Jnimnrv 



llu' liist ill tunc, led us to conjecture that hull) Uiuls weie 

 Gallinules, the variation in their notes being clue to a cliflerence 

 of sex. This suimisc proved correct, for both were seen before 

 many days passed, and were watched in the act of uttering the cries 

 just mentioned as well as making other sounds that will be 

 described later. 



Their chosen haunt was a swamp about five acres in extent, 

 covered with dense beds of cat-tail flags and thickets of low 

 willows, among which were many pools and ditches of open 

 water three or four feet in depth connected by a network of 

 muskrat run-ways. The only really dry places were the tops of 

 the nvmierous large tussocks and scattered houses of the musk- 

 rats, for among the willows and cat-tails the water was every- 

 where from six to twelve inches deep. The swamp was bordered 

 on one side by a railroad, on the next by a high knoll, on the third 

 by partially submerged woods of dead or dying maples, while on 

 the fourth side an expanse of marshy ground stretched away for 

 hundreds of yards to the shores of a pond. The area covered 

 most thickly with flags and willows was separated from the maple 

 swamp by a ditch, broad, straight and practically free from all 

 vegetation save duck-weed, which formed an emerald carpet on 

 the surface of the brown, stagnant water. 



The Gallinules, for reasons best known to themselves, paid 

 frequent visits to the flooded woods, always crossing and recross- 

 ing the ditch at a certain spot where an island, or rather raft, of 

 floating vegetation entangled among the stems of a half-dead 

 busli, artbrded some slight cover as well as a convenient place for 

 feeding and basking in the sun. The knoll just mentioned com- 

 manded an unobstructed view of this ditch, and we soon found 

 that by lying still on the grass or crouching behind a cluster of 

 alders we could watch the birds from a distance of less than forty 

 yards without danger of alarming them. 



Sometimes one appeared, sometimes the other, but the male 

 the more frequently. He was a truly beautiful creature. With 

 the exception of the yellow tip, his bill was scarlet, and this 

 color extended back over a broad frontal shield which at a little 

 distance looked like the red comb of a laying hen. At every 

 movement of the head this brilliant color flashed like a flame. 

 When he swam in undei- the bushes it glowed in the dense shade 

 like a living coal, appearing and disappearing as he turned 



