THE VIRGINIA RAIL. 



{Rallus virginiaims . ) 



THIS miniature of Rallus elegans 

 or king rail, is found through- 

 out the whole of temperate 

 North America as far as the 

 Bfitish Provinces, south to Guatema a 

 and Cuba, and winters almost to the 

 northern limit of its range. A speci- 

 men was sent by Major Bendire to the 

 National Museum from Walla Walla, 

 Wash., which was taken Jan. i6, 1879, 

 when the snow was more than a foot 

 deep. Other names of the species are: 

 Lesser clapper rail, little red rail, and 

 fresh-water mud hen. The male and 

 female are like small king rails, are 

 streaked with dark-brown and yellow- 

 ish olive above, have reddish chestnut 

 wing coverts, are plain brown on top 

 of head and back of neck, have a white 

 eyebrow, white throat, breast and sides 

 bright rufous; the flanks, wing linings 

 and under tail coverts are broadly 

 barred with dark brown and white; 

 eyes red. 



The name of this rail is not as appro- 

 priate to-day as it was when Virginia 

 included nearly all of the territory east 

 .of the Mississippi. It is not a local 

 bird, but nests from New York, Ohio, 

 and Illinois northward. Short of wing, 

 with a feeble, fluttering flight when 

 flushed from the marsh, into which it 

 quickly drops again, as if incapible of 

 going farther, it is said this small bird 

 can nevertheless migrate immense dis- 

 tances. One small straggler from a 

 flock going southward, according to 

 Neltje Blanchan, fell exhausted on the 

 deck of a vessel off the Long Island 

 coast nearly a hundred miles at sea. 



The rail frequents marshes and boggy 

 swamps. The nest is built in a tuft of 

 weeds or grasses close to the water, is 

 compact and slightly hollowed. The 

 eggs are cream or buff, sparsely spotted 

 with reddish-brown and obscure liUc, 

 from 1.20 to 1.28 inches long to .90 to 

 .93 broad. The number in a set varies 

 from six to twelve. The eggs are 

 hatched in June. 



The Virginia rail is almost exclu- 

 sively a fresh-water bird. It is not 

 averse to salt water, but even near the 

 sea it is likely to find out those spots 

 in the bay where I'resh-water springs 



bubble up rather than the brackish. 

 These springs particularly abound in 

 Hempstead and Great South Bay on 

 the south coast of Long Island. Brew- 

 ster says the voice of the Virginia rail, 

 when heard at a distance of only a few 

 yards, has a vibrating, almost unearthly 

 quality, and seems to issue from the 

 ground directly beneath the feet. The 

 female, when anxious about her eggs 

 or young, calls ki ki-ki in low tones 

 and kin, much like a flicker. The young 

 of both sexes in autumn give, when 

 startled, a short, explosive kep or kik, 

 closely similar to that of the Carolina 

 rail. 



There is said to be more of individ- 

 ual variation in this species than in 

 any of the larger, scarcely two exam- 

 ples being closely alike. The chin and 

 throat may be distinctly white, or the 

 cinnamon may extend forward entirely 

 to the bill. This species is found in 

 almost any place where it can find suit- 

 able food. Nelson says: "I haveoften 

 flushed it in thickets v/hen looking for 

 woodcock, as well as from the midst 

 of large marshes. It arrives the first 

 of May and departs in October; nests 

 along the borders of prairie sloughs 

 and marshes, depositing from eight to 

 fourteen eggs. The nest may often be 

 discovered at a distance by the appear- 

 ance of the surrounding grass, the 

 blades of which are in many cases in- 

 terwoven over the nest, apparently to 

 shield the bird from the fierce rays of 

 the sun, which are felt with redoubled 

 force on the marshes. The nests are 

 sometimes built on a solitary tussock 

 of grass, growing in the water, but not 

 often. The usual position is in the 

 soft, dense grass growing close to the 

 edge of the slough, and rarely in grass 

 over eight inches high. The nest is 

 a thick, matted platform of marsh 

 grasses, with a medium-sized depres- 

 sion for the eggs." 



Some of the rails have such poor 

 wings that it has been believed by some 

 unthinking people that they turn to 

 frogs in the fall instead of migrating — 

 a theory parallel with that which for- 

 merly held that swallows hibernate in 

 the mud of shallow ponds. 



