EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT. 169 



swooped fearlessly toward us. Despite our painstaking search 

 we could not discover their secret, and we hope that any enemy 

 may have been as unsuccessful. During this season the Willets 

 feed principally on worms and insects. 



14. Solitary Sandpiper (Helodromas solitarius, Wils.). I 

 noticed two specimens feeding on the mud flats. This is an early 

 date for this bird, as it nests north of the United States. 



15. Yellow-Legs (Totanus Havipes, Gmel.). Like the curlew, 

 the small flocks of Yellow-Legs were the advance guard of the 

 thousands of their kin which would soon appear from the north 

 and pass southward. 



16. Clapper Rail or Marsh Hen (Rallus crepitans, Gmel.). 

 This is the most characteristic breeding bird of the marshes on 

 and near Cobb Island. It is very wary and secretive, and seldom 

 allows itself to be seen, but its reiterated calls combined with the 

 remarkable ventriloquial power with which they are uttered, 

 makes it seem as if every bunch of grass hid one or more of these 

 birds. They are very abundant on the island, and without par- 

 ticular search we found several of their nests. The young birds 

 had left in most cases, and two sets of eggs of seven and nine re- 

 spectively, were almost ready to hatch. A wooden causeway 

 built on piles connected the main building of the Life-Saving Sta- 

 tion with the ocean side, and just about two feet to the right of 

 this, half-way across the island, a Clapper Rail had built her 

 nest. Several times we crept up and watched her leave her eggs 

 — a small brown form which swiftly and silently threaded the 

 reeds without touching the water. 



On June twenty-third and twenty-fourth unusually high tides 

 had destroyed the nests of hundreds of these birds, and their 

 eggs were washed up along the shore in windrows. The nests 

 which we found in the low marshes had all been built since that 

 time and showed a remarkable provision against a repetition of 

 such a disaster. The nests on the higher dunes were merely a 

 rough collection of reeds upon the ground, while the nests in the 

 flooded portions of the island, although rebuilt at almost the ex- 

 act location of the old nests, were woven between supporting 

 reeds some eighteen inches higher, the old flattened nests form- 

 ing a rough platform at one side and below the new structures, 

 and used by the rails as resting places in leaving or returning to 

 the eggs. 



The rails feed on small crabs and insects, and they certainly 

 cannot lack for food. If anyone has ever stood barefooted in 

 the waters of a Cobb Island marsh photographing the nest of one 



