HAUNTS AND BREEDING HABITS OF THE YELLOW RAIL 



Coturnicops noveboracensis 



By Rev. P. B. Peabody, Blue Rapids, Kansas 



With Photos by the Author. 



Foreword by the Editor: Mr. Peabody is undoubtedly the highest, as he is almost the 

 exclusive authority upon the nesting habits of the Yellow Rail. His unexampled devotion to 

 the quest of this rare and elusive species is one of the outstanding romances of oology. He is 

 good for twenty years more of it; and if ever his spirit isjpermitted to return, some decades hence, 

 it will undoubtedly be to haunt the marshes of North Dakota in Yellow Rail time. 



Our previous knowledge of the nesting of the Yellow Rail appears to be limited to four pub- 

 lished references: the first, by Coues (Birds of the Northwest, 1874, p. 539), to a set of six eggs 

 taken May 17, 1863, at Winnebago, in extreme northern Illinois. These eggs, undoubtedly 

 authentic, were placed in the National Museum collection at Washington. The second reference 

 is in O. W. Knight's work on "The Birds of Maine" (1908), where he says simply (p. 143), 'Mr. 

 Boardman found it nesting in Washington County, the nest being placed on the ground in marshes 

 in similar situations to that of the Sora." The third account by Norman A. Wood, M. M. C. O., 

 (Auk, Vol. XXVI, Jan. 1909, p. 3) records, upon the authority of Prof. Walter B. Barrows, a set 

 of four eggs taken May 29, 1894, near Petersburg, Michigan, by a collector for Mr. Jerome Trom- 

 bley. "The situation was in a large cranberry marsh, and the nest was fastened to the tops of 

 the long marsh grass, the bottom resting on, or just reaching, the water. It was composed en- 

 tirely of marsh grass". Mr. Trombley adds, "From the size and appearance of both the bird 

 and the eggs, the evidence is fairly conclusive, although it is not absolutely certain, that the bird 

 was a Yellow Rail." The fourth report comes from one A. S. Peters, writing in "The Oologist", 

 Feb. 1918, of a wet nest of loose construction and with little atempt at concealment, found in a 

 swamp of southern Minnesota; but Mr. Peabody professes to find this account unsatisfactory. 



It is noteworthy that no authentic nesting records of the Yellow Rail have come to us from 

 British Columbia, although the birds are of undoubted occurrence and locally common during 

 the breeding season from eastern Ontario to Alberta, and north at least to York Factory on the 

 western shore of Hudson Bay. The characterization of its range by the A. O. U. Committee 

 (Check-List, 1910) as "Chiefly eastern North America", is not borne out by recent records; and 

 its occasional abundance in winter upon the San Francisco Bay Marshes, as revealed by excep- 

 tionally high tides, established a presumption that the Yellow Rail is merely one of the over- 

 looked species of our western interior. [Correct; See article on page 31 — Ed.] 



Full twenty years ago, upon a willowy meadow waste whereon a little 

 water stood, in the Red River region of far northwestern Minnesota, I heard one 

 June day many strange clicking noises previously unknown. These were dis- 

 missed from mind as being probably attributable to frogs. One winter's day 

 in 1899 a fine young protege (who has withheld his name from this account) 

 wrote me that he had heard during the previous June, amid the mazes of a long 

 coulee-meadow in central North Dakota, a series of strange noises. Convinced 

 that these were of bird origin, he sought for nests. Two such he found, — a 

 discovery made in each case by the setting of a number nine boot squarely 

 upon the eggsl Two units, however, escaped the fate of the other seventeen; 

 and — might he send me these for identification? These eggs proved to be those 

 of the Yellow Rail, rarest of the eggs of North American breeding water-birds. 



In early June of a following year, 1901, I made my way across the unlinked 

 area of rolling upland prairie, precipitous ravine, and venerable butte, which 

 lies to the west of Devil's Lake. My destination reached, I hastened across 

 some acres of "hog- wallow '; on over still wider areas of virgin prairie, whereon 

 disported and sang many a blithesome Longspur; and stood at last atop a great 

 butte, looking down upon that deep-lying sea of sedges, rushes, and grasses, 

 known locally as "The Big Coulee." In and out it wound among the hills. 

 Far to the northwest glistened a lake well girt with oak, ash, and aspen. Here 

 and there along the western borders of the coulee lay tiny lagoons, fed by hidden 

 springs and studded with cat-tail flags. Far out upon the open meadow were 

 little "mottes" of willow, rose, and aspen. It was a most animated scene. 

 Out among the cat-tails resounded the weird, not unmusical Ou-gl' -ee-ay-ay-ay-dl 

 of the Yellow-headed Blackbird. Whilomly outrang the trumpeting call of the 

 Pied-billed Grebe. The rustic pipe of Prairie Marsh Wrens, nesting among the 

 cat-tails, added the cheer of unrhythmic chatter to the prevailing symphony. 

 Soft undertones of other bird-songs enriched the music of the meadows. Here 



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