Rails, Gallinules, Coots 



stalks, with their bills only above water, and allow a skiff to pass 

 over them, without stirring. When thoroughly frightened by the 

 dogs' constant flushing, and the shooting of their masters in the 

 marsh, or, more particularly, when wounded, many never rise 

 again. 



It is always the sportsman's hope to flush the rails, whose 

 strong legs and skulking habits sufficiently protect them in the 

 sedges, but whose slow, short flight keeps them within range of 

 the veriest tyro. The 'prentice hand is tried on rails. Trailing 

 their legs after them, and feebly fluttering their wings as they rise 

 just above the tops of the rushes, they soon drop down into them 

 again as if exhausted ; yet these are the very birds that migrate 

 from the West Indies to Hudson Bay. Their flight is by no means 

 so feeble as it appears. Darky " pushers " enfold the goings and 

 comings, the nesting and incubation of the rails, with all manner 

 of absurd superstitions. 



Were it not for the incessant squeaking, "like young pup- 

 pies," that is kept up in the haunts of soras, especially at dusk, 

 morning or evening, or at the nesting season, or when startled by 

 a sudden noise, we should never suspect there were birds living 

 in the marshes. Pushers in the reedy lakes of Illinois and Michi- 

 gan, and along the low shores of the James and other quiet rivers, 

 sweetly whistle and call ker-wee, ker-wee, peep, peep, and huh, 

 'huh, huh, k, 'k,'k, 'huh, until scores of throats reply, and slaughter 

 soon commences. What little tender flesh there is on the rails' 

 poor bodies, rather flavorless and sapid at the best, is filled with 

 shot for the gourmands to grit their teeth against. As Mrs. Wright 

 says of the bobolinks, so it may be said of the broiled or skewered 

 soras, that they only serve "to lengthen some weary dinner 

 where a collection of animal and vegetable bric-a-brac takes the 

 place of satisfactory nourishment." 



In the sedges that shelter and feed them, the rails also build 

 their matted grassy nest, never far from the water, and indeed 

 often lifted into a tussock of grasses washed by it. The eggs, 

 more drab than buff, but spotted and marked with reddish brown 

 like the Virginia rail's, may number as many as fifteen ; and the 

 glossy black chicks run about on strong legs, but with the creep- 

 ing timidity of mice, from the hour of hatching. 



The Yellow, or New York, or Yellow-breasted Rail (Por^ana 



182 



