THE SORA RAIL 



By EDWARD HOWE FORBUSH 



THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES 

 Educational Leaflet No. 75 



In the marsh Jhe wilderness makes its last stand. Civilization 

 sweeps a\\;iy the forest, dams and diverts the streams, cultivates prairie, 

 hiil, and meadow, traverses the pond in boats, and destroys the native 

 birds and mammals, but the marsh remains unconquered to the last. 

 Along the Atlantic seaboard, where agriculture and civilization have held 

 sway for hundreds of years, stretches of bog-land 

 yet persist, even within the limits of cities ; and here 

 >uch shy creatures as inhabited them when Columbus 

 discovered America still maintain their homes. Here the great snapping- 

 turtle drags its slow length along, here the Bittern may be heard "driving 

 its stake," and here the Rail peers from its age-old fastness the cover of 

 reeds, flags, and sedges. Man dislikes the quaking bog and the miry ooze, 

 and so it remains a refuge for the light-footed and defenseless ones that 

 can run over its shuddering expanse or crawl in its mud and water. 



Rushes, sedges, waving cattails, and lush water-plants in tangled 

 profusion, form a curtain screening the private life of the Rails from 

 human view. We hear sounds from behind this screen, and now and 

 then a "Mud-hen" peeps out; and so we have come to associate them 

 with the steaming summer morass, the pond-weeds, pickerel-weed, and 

 the lily-pads, over which, light of weight and splay-footed, they can run 

 at will. 



Some of their notes are such as might be expected to come from 

 a frog-breeding morass; others are as sweet and wild as those of the 

 Whip-poor-will, or of the Solitary Vireo. Rails have some notes that 

 rc-emble and harmonize with the frog-chorus, such as krek, krek, knk. 

 knk. knk, and others more subdued and varied. 1 may venture to assert 

 that no man yet has fully identified all the notes of all the species of 

 American Rails, and probably no one man ever will. I have heard 

 sounds in the marshes that I could not identify. In 

 iSSn William I'.rewster devoted two weeks to. an at- Mysterious 

 i r> -i i j A i /" L -j Bird-voices 



tempt to see a supposed Rail heard in the Cambridge 



marshes, lie never saw it. and the voice is still a mystery, although it 

 has been heard many times since and in other places. This bird may have 

 been a Yellow Rail, but twice 1 have heard a wonderful solo from the 

 marshes, partly original, and partly in seeming imitation of other birds, 

 which, from its quality. I ran attribute only to the Sora. This "song" 

 was kept up intermittently for several hours, and showed great versatility; 



