"half-prone dead grass divided INTO TWO WISPS" 



layings lie between the 1st and the 10th of June; while seldom have egg-embryos 

 evinced a greater development than four or five days, at the very latest dates 

 of discovery. Moreover, it seems clear that brooding does not, usually, begin 

 until the sets are completed. 



Yellow Rails are not close sitters, though nests have been approached 

 with unstinted caution, and always from the same direction, save for two in- 

 stances of flushing, warm eggs have always been the only evidence of recent 

 brooding. At a point in the Cheyenne Basin some miles from the Big Coulee, I 

 joined, in June of 1921, a group of friends — former hosts and hostesses — at a six- 

 o'clock dinner, upon my arrival after a three-day journey. Hardly had we 

 seated ourselves at the table before there suddenly came a tremendous down-pour 

 of rain. Arriving at the meadows, next morning, I found the Montana Red- 

 wings perching all about on the meadow-grasses quite disconsolate; for the flood 

 had reached to the very tops of the fourteen-inch grasses! Full well I realized 

 then what to expect in the matter of Yellow Railsl But, on the second day of 

 search, I sauntered down into the meadow from a little knoll whereon I had 

 eaten my luncheon, mechanically drew aside a little wisp of dead grass, and 

 found beneath it a single Yellow Rail egg in an abortive nest. A tiny opening 

 led into the nest-place from the northeast, with a similar "mouse-hole" exit on 

 the northwest. The egg lay in the water — deserted. Next day, in quite the 

 same manner, I wandered down upon the coulee after my luncheon, across the 

 area mown the previous August, and suddenly came upon another lone Yellow 

 Rail egg lying on a flat, wet surface of dead salt-grass about twenty feet from 

 yesterday's nest. How this waif had ever escaped the vandals that peck holes 

 in sparrow eggs, on the meadows, one might not even guess. The two eggs 

 were identical, produced by the same bird; only, the second egg was marked at 

 the small end. 



Six days later, I had the rare joy of dipping into the Yellow Rail meadows 

 at the northern colony. Here I found three male Yellow Rails clicking away 



