Rail as her nest-making went on. Of this character were most of the nest- 

 canopies afterward found, in whatsoever sort of matrix the nest proper may 

 have been placed. And yet, the coarse-grass locus is hardly the norm. Of two 

 distinct types of nest-matrix appearing (with water of the same depth in both), 

 I have found the fine-grass type to have been the prevailing one. My second 

 nest, found next morning, was the only one of the entire series in which there 

 has been any evidence of a built-in canopy. This nest was in a fine-grass area, 

 some rods from the former, amid rather scanty grasses. Water was of about 

 the usual depth favored, — four inches. The canopy was very slight and the 

 surrounding herbage quite thin. Only two other nests that I now recall were so 

 poorly hidden. In every other case, all nests have been utterly concealed, 

 there being no trace whatever of any artificial moulding of the standing or the 

 prone herbage. Herein lies the supreme cunning of Yellow Rails. In the 

 majority of cases noted, then, the nesting sites of this Rail have been where 

 the hay-rake of the previous year has dropped a small wisp of hay. This fact 

 has led to success in the nest-finding, when once the trick has been learned. 

 One had only to traverse the clean-mown areas and examine every likely wisp 

 of dead grass; and ultimately the nest would be found. Under some one of 

 such, and that, usually, the most unlikely one of a hundred or more, would be 

 the place where has lurked a most neat and elaborate nest. The most wonderful 

 fabric of all was found, one June, years ago, after both skill and insight had 

 become evolved. Amid coarse-grass bogs, a hundred feet and over from the 

 spring-stream, there stood one bog, a bit apart from the rest. The water about 

 it was rather deep. On top of this grass-tussock was a bit of the dead grass of 

 the previous year. This I tore away, finding beneath a nest of unusual perfection. 

 It was of the usual diameter — about five inches — but thicker — an inch and a half. 

 Most wonderful the structure of itl Every blade of the fine grasses that composed 

 it had been brought from far, and carried upward, from the side of the tussock 

 into the top, through a small hole but little larger than a mouse-hole! Every 

 Yellow Rail nest of my finding has been of this general character: About an 

 inch thick; made of the finest possible grasses; and between four and five inches 

 in diameter. The cupping of the nests is never so broad as with other Rails; 

 just because, one must presume, fewer eggs are to be placed within it. (I must 

 here put on record one marked exception to the above-described norm: "Y" 

 found a nest amidst green grasses made almost wholly of green grasses). 



My extended studies have convinced me that every nest of the Yellow 

 Rail is most laboriously made, as a rule, by the carrying up, or in, of solitary 

 blades of grass. (In case of the nest of 1912, the nest material must have been 

 dragged in for some fourteen inches, before the chosen spot could be reached). 



Among the faunal changes that have taken place in the Big Coulee, since 

 first I knew it, has been the gradual displacement of the original coarse grass by 

 fine, edible grasses. This change, I am sure, has been caused by the grazing 

 and the mowing. Indeed, these factors, and especially the intensive grazing, 

 I am sure have been responsible for the gradual desertion of the given section of 

 the Big Coulee by the Yellow Rails. The given area originally affected by these 

 Rails may be roughly comprised within a single acre. My own nests have 

 seldom been found more than three or four rods from the little spring-stream 

 (never save in two instances). This fact accentuates the love of the Yellow 

 Rail, in its nesting, for water. Only two nests were ever found on dry ground. 

 Three nests have, however, been found away from the indicated area. Y 

 found one nest amid coarse grass in the narrow meadow-neck, between the 

 buttes; and another in a similar environ, by the spring atop the butte. I, myself, 

 once failed to find, in that same meadow-neck, a Yellow Rail nest that I was 

 positive had been placed there. 



No Rail, save jamalcensls, habitually lays eggs so few as does the Yellow 

 Rail. I regard eight and nine as the norms; with ten as a probably normal 

 maximum. The North Dakota breeding period is now well established. Few 

 eggs are laid, I imagine, before the 20th of May, and very few so early. Most 



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