224 BIRDS 



blunt behind where their queer little short-pointed tails 

 stand up, the rails' small figures thread their way in and 

 out of the mazes over the oozy ground with wonderful 

 rapidity. 



Food gathered from the surface of the ground is picked 

 off with sharp pecks, but all the rails run up the rushes 

 also, clinging with the help of their hind toes to the swaying 

 stem within reach of the grain hanging in tassels at the top. 

 The long front toes, flattened but scarcely lobed, enable 

 them to tread out a dinner from the mud as well as to 

 swim across a ditch or inlet. All the rails are good divers. 

 Rather than expose themselves as a target for the gunner, 

 they wiU cling to submerged stalks, with their bills only 

 above water, and allow a skiff to pass over them, without 

 stirring. 



It is always the sportsman's hope to flush the rails, 

 whose strong legs and skulking habits sufficiently protect 

 them in the sedges, but whose slow, short flight keeps them 

 within range of the veriest tyro. The 'prentice hand is 

 tried on rails. Trailing their legs after them, and feebly 

 fluttering their wings as they rise just above the tops of the 

 rushes, they soon drop down into them again as if ex- 

 hausted; yet some of these are the very birds that migrate 

 from the West Indies to Hudson Bay. Their flight is by 

 no means so feeble as it appears. 



The Sora, or Carolina, Rail 



Length — 8 to 9.5 inches. A little smaller than a robin. 



Male and Female — ^Above, ohve brown varied with black 

 and gray; front of head, stripe on crown, and line on 

 throat, black; side of head and breast ashy gray or slate; 



