86 THE NiIDOLOGIST 
The Little Black Rail. 
BY JOHN N. CLARK.* 
Y FIRST acquaintance with the Black 
M Rail began in the Centennial year, 
1876. A neighbor of mine came to 
me on the 13th of July inquiring if I cared 
for a set of Rail’s eggs—in a kind deference 
to my well-known interest in Oology. He 
said he had that day, on the salt meadow, 
mcwed over a nest of nine eggs, and cut off 
the bird’s head. He had left bird, nest and: 
eggs on the deck of a small boat near the 
place some two miles away, and I was wel- 
come to the same if I had any interest in 
them. What species were they? He did 
not know. He was an old hunter who had 
bagged a great many Rails, long-billed and 
short-billed but a Rail was simply a Rail to 
him regardless of the length of his bill. I 
had no very deep interest; the only species 
I had found here (Virginia) were too com- 
mon to excite much attention; yet the one 
nest of King Rail I had found some years 
before, moved my curiosity enough to ask 
him to look at my sets of Rails. He repu- 
diated the Carolinas promptly. ‘‘T’hese are 
white,’’ he said; and the King Rails, 
“these are much smaller,’’ and he was 
quite confident that they were unlike any- 
thing in my collection; so much so that at 
my request he promised to bring them to 
me next day. But he did not succeed in 
inspiring me with sufficient interest to go 
after them, as I should have done had I 
entertained the faintest conception of the 
reality. My kind neighbor brought me 
what was left of the eggs, four sound and 
three cracked ones, loose in his pocket. 
Disaster had overtaken them—a hungry cat 
had found the bird a delicacy, and a boy 
had found the eggs. He had followed up 
the boy and brought me to the relics, which 
were a Startling surprise for they were dis- 
tinctly unlike any I had ever seen, and of 
course highly valued when at last their 
identity had been unmistakably established 
as Little Black Rails’. 
Since that time I have met with eggs of 
the species from four different nests. One 
was found on the salt meadow near the 
West shore of the Connecticut River near 
its mouth in Old Saybrook. ‘The situation 
was on the bank of a small ditch which was 
partially grown up with sedges and nearly 
“ Read before the American Ornithologist’s 
Union. 
dry at the time of the find. The meadow 
was a tract which had not have been mowed 
in some years and on the ditch bank was a 
large growth of old dry blue grass, of pre- 
vious years, partially prostrated by win- 
ter’s ice and snow and held up from the 
ground by the new growth sparsely work- ~ 
ing its way through to the light. As I 
lifted a bulging tuft of it I was startled to 
find a nest beneath with a beautiful set of 
six eggs of the Little Black Rail. Carefully 
smoothing back the drooping grasses I left 
them hoping for an increase which however — 
failed to develop. Four days later I again 
gently lifted the covering and found the 
bird sitting closely on her treasures. At a 
motion on my part she darted from the nest 
across the ditch and stopped without taking 
flight in a little tuft of grass within an inch 
of my boot; at a slight movement on my 
part she darted into another tuft a few feet 
behind me, and as I essayed to turn she 
darted back to her former position by my — 
boot. Isay darted, for I can think of no 
other word that so nearly express her every 
movement, which was so swift that the eye 
could scarcely follow it. I wanted that 
bird greatly for still I have no representa- 
tive of the species in my collection, though 
it is quite complete of that class found in 
Connecticut otherwise, but vain was every 
effort to get a stroke of my staffatit. Its 
next movement was to spring into the air 
and take flight, dropping into a patch of 
cat-tails a few rods away. Its flight was 
after the manner of the Rail family and I 
could easily have shot it on the wing had 
my gun been with me. This is the only 
bird of the species I have ever seen. 
On the 13th of June, 1884, I took a trip 
to the salt meadows of Lynne on the Hast- 
ern shore of Connecticut River in pursuit. 
of the nests of Seaside and Sharp-tailed 
Finches. This tract of salt meadow extends 
for two or three miles along the shore of 
the river from its mouth and must be about 
a mile in width, separated into islands by 
many winding creeks and coves. A large 
quantity of hay is taken annually away in 
scows by farmers from adjacent towns, but 
there are many acres of rushes and even of 
the finer growth so far from shore as to be 
almost inaccessable for practical purposes; 
these abandoned tracts form a paradise for 
the various species of marsh birds. Red- 
shouldered Blackbirds, Long-billed Marsh 
Wrens, with an occasional Least Bittern in 
the cat-tails and sedges, and Virginia Rails 
saat aaa ice a relil 
