at intervals on the more open areas of the wide meadow. A fourth male enter- 

 tained me, later, in lively fashion, in a wet, fine-grass area among willows at the 

 meadow-margin. But I never found his nest. In mid-afternoon of the first 

 day afield, while quartering, tirelessly, over a space whereon a male Yellow Rail 

 had been persistently sounding, I suddenly flushed a female. ^he ground was 

 very open; and instantly I knew by telepathy that I had, for the very first time 

 in twenty years, flushed a Yellow Rail from her eggs! Without stirring, I 

 glanced into the grasses before me. Four feet away, where lay a bit of half-prone 

 dead grass, slightly divided into two wisps, I caught glimpses of the eggs. Eight 

 of them there were, in the smallest and the most deeply cupped of all my nests. 

 Narrowly had they escaped destruction. One of them had been pecked, near 

 the smaller end, and was blown, right there, through the resulting hole. Water, 

 aplenty, for the rinsing, lay at my feet. The eggs in this set were the most 

 perfectly uniform of those in any Yellow Rail sets I have ever found, although 

 most sets are very uniform. They were slightly pointed-ovate, clear of ground, 

 over most of the contours, but all of them bearing caps of irregular specks of 

 rather warm but pale brown. (This set is now the property of the Museum of 

 Comparative Oology, Santa Barbara, California.) 



During the next few delightful days, in that rich center of bird-life, I 

 acquired new elements of Yellow Rail nesting-lore. My male of the willows 

 led me many a wild-goose chase. Clicking lustily right here one moment, the 

 next he would be sounding away a hundred yards distant. But male number two, 

 out on the main meadow, was the tamest and, in the matter of rhythm, the 

 most erratic, of any male observed in recent years. His clickings were, in the 

 main, largely non-rhythmic, defying tabulation. And he kept me wearisomely 

 on the qui vive, by his utter indifference as to my near presence. In reminis- 

 cence, one surprising fact confronts me: Of late years, in all three colonies, the 

 soundings of my male Yellow Rails have been much less energetic and less 

 frequent than of old; while they have afforded no acceleration, and no greater 

 frequency, during the waning hours of the day. I am inclined to believe that 

 the Yellow Rail breeds, locally, everywhere along that wonderful Cheyenne 

 Basin; and that the nests have been so seldom found just because nobody knows 

 howl 



I have been informed by my good friend, Norman A Wood, of the Uni- 

 versity of Michigan, that sundry bird-men of North Dakota, piqued at their 

 failure to find Yellow Rail nests on the very ground whereon / have repeatedly 

 found them, have petulantly declared that "no nests of the Yellow Rail have 

 ever been found". In refutation, I amusedly attest: — The eggs are diagnostic, 

 for one thing; while, — for another, — but a few days ago, while overhauling my 

 desk, I came upon a dainty reticule of birch bark into which was crushed a tiny 

 paper sack. This, on being opened, bore the legend, — "Feathers of Yellow 

 Rail, 1910". Then I recalled: In trying to catch a female Yellow Rail at her 

 nest, with a mouse-trap, I only succeeded in robbing her of a number of breast 

 feathers. These, of richest brown, all white-barred, are like the feathers of no 

 other bird among all the North American ornls. — How oddly does proof appear, 

 sometimes, just when most we need it; and how gaily do we fling our hats aloft 

 whensoever such proof does come our way! 



So few are the extant eggs of the Yellow Rail that one may wisely enlarge, 

 here, upon their unique characters and their beauty: The only ralline affinities, 

 with these eggs, are with those of the Black Rail. From these they differ in 

 their greater size and their somewhat narrower shape, in the deeper buff of the 

 ground-color, and in the disposition and the color of the markings. 

 Yellow Rail eggs are often markedly elongate, with a tendency toward 

 equal-endedness. The ground-color is, originally, of a rich, warm, (varied) 

 buff, which, however, inevitably fades, in time, even if the eggs are entirely 

 kept from the light. Warm browns and lilacs are the prevailing tints 

 of the markings, while occasional eggs are capped with a rich, dense mahogany. 

 Normal markings involve spots and specks, never of any great size. These are, 

 in most cases, confined entirely to the apex; although a few eggs in a set may 



40 



