298 The Sora Rail 



some of the notes were frog-like, but most of them were like those of a 

 bird. A common call or song has been rendered ker zvec; and the Sora 

 has a high "whinny" also notes like peeping chickens. 



The Rail is a bird of mystery. I always feel like putting an inter- 

 rogation-point after the name. About the habits of no other common 

 birds do we know so little. The Sora Rail is one of the most abundant 



birds of North America, and has been sold in the mar- 

 ^ ar kets by thousands for more than a century. It breeds 



commonly, even abundantly, over a great part of the 

 United States and Canada ; yet most of its habits, and, perhaps, many of 

 its notes, are still largely its own secret. While floating in a light canoe 

 down the sluggish current of some marsh-bordered river in September 

 you may watch the Sora silently stealing along the muddy margin, poking 

 things with its short yellow bill, and gently jetting its tail ; or in tramp- 

 ing along the edge of the marsh you may see one flutter up, just above 

 the grass and reeds, and fly awkwardly, with dangling legs, across some 

 slimy spool, to drop clumsily out of sight again, as in the accompanying 

 picture. This is about all the observant traveller ever sees of the bird. 

 Rails are timid, skulking fowls and pass the greater part of their lives 

 wading under cover of water-plants or squeezing between the grass- 

 stems. They have done this so much that their little bodies have become 



compressed from side to side, and they can voluntarily 



shrink in width, so as to push their way between stems 



apparently only half an inch apart. Hence the pro- 

 verbial phrase "thin as a rail." 



Rails make for themselves dark and winding passages among the 

 reeds, grasses, and rushes, along which they may run swiftly to escape 

 four-footed enemies, and, at the same time, remain concealed from 

 winged foes. They come out into the open when they believe that the 

 coast is clear, with no enemy in sight, or at night, when hawks are 

 absent. The Black Rail has kept its secrets so well that, although a cen- 

 tury has elapsed since Americans began to study ornithology, Arthur T. 

 Wayne, in 1904, was the first person to see the mother-bird on her nest. 

 This was in South Carolina. Perhaps some investigator of the future 

 may build a watch-tower in a marsh and study the habits of the marsh- 

 folk with a spy-glass, but until something of this sort is undertaken we 

 are likely to know little of Rails' habits. The curiosity of these birds, 

 however, may become of advantage to the observer, as they have been 



known to approach a hunter lying in wait for ducks 

 Curiosity and peck his clothing, boots, or gunbarrel. A quiet 



man is to them a wonder, for they are accustomed to 

 associate much noise and movement with all humankind. 



The Sora nests about the borders of prairie sloughs, in the soft, 

 dense grasses, or sometimes on a tussock. In the marshes of the East 

 the nest is often placed in a bunch of coarse grass, or among the cattail- 

 flags or other rushes. It is sometimes a bulky, arched structure, made 



