Rails, Gallinules, Coots 



performance occupied about five seconds." Of all impossible 

 clews to the identification of a bird, that of its notes as v/ritten 

 down differently in every book you pick up is the most hopeless 

 to the novice without field practice. Nearly all the rails have 

 a sort of tree toad rattle in addition to some other notes, which 

 in the king rail's case have a metallic, ringing quality, and that are 

 perhaps most intelligibly written "ke-link-kink; hink-kink-kink." 



Virginia Rail 



(Rallus -virginianus) 



Called also: LESSER CLAPPER RAIL; LITTLE RED RAIL; 

 FRESH WATER MUD HEN 



Length 8.50 to io inches. 



Male and Female Like small king rails; streaked with dark 

 brown and yellowish olive above; reddish chestnut wing 

 coverts; plain brown on top of head and back of neck; a 

 white eyebrow; throat white; breast and sides bright rufous; 

 flanks, wing linings, and under tail coverts broadly barred 

 with dark brown and white; eyes red. 



Range From British Provinces to Guatemala and Cuba; nests 

 from New York, Ohio, and Illinois northward ; winters from 

 near the southern limit of its nesting range southward. 



Season Summer resident, April to October, north of Washington. 



When the original grant of Queen Elizabeth included nearly 

 all the territory east of the Mississippi that the Massachusetts 

 Bay Colony did not take in, the Virginia rail's name would have 

 been more appropriate than it is to-day; for it is by no means a 

 local bird, as its name might imply, and neither on the coast nor 

 in the interior, north and south, is it rare. Short of wing, with a 

 feeble, fluttering flight when flushed from the marsh, into which 

 it quickly drops again, as if incapable of going farther, this small 

 land lover can nevertheless migrate immense distances. One 

 straggler from a flock going southward recently fell exhausted on 

 the deck of a vessel off the Long Island coast nearly a hundred 

 miles at sea. The ornithologist must frequently smile at the 

 mysteries and superstitions associated with the nesting and 

 migrating habits of this and other rails by the unintelligent. 



Doubtless there are many more of all species of rails in the 

 United States than even one who scoured the marshes would 



179 



