BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. j^o 



been reported from anywhere in New England within very recent times, but a specimen of 

 the Little Brown Crane was shot at Natick Hill, Rhode Island, on October 9, 1889,' and it is 

 said 2 to have been accompanied by another, apparently of the same kind. This capture 

 suggests the possibility that the species last named may have been represented among the 

 Cranes on which the roistering Morton feasted during his residence at Merrymount.] 



50. Rallus elegans Aud. 

 King Rail. 



Casual visitor ; only one definite record. 



On several occasions within the past few years Mr. Walter Faxon and I 

 have heard in May or June, in the Fresh Pond Marshes, and also at Great 

 Meadow, a deep, guttural umph, umph, umph, umph, something like the grunting 

 call of the Virginia Rail but louder and also suggestive of the quacking of a 

 hoarse-voiced Duck. We have reasons for believing that these notes are pro- 

 duced by the King Rail but the evidence on this head is not as yet conclusive. 

 Up to the time when the introduction to the present Memoir was finished and 

 printed I was not aware that the species in question had ever certainly been 

 found in the Cambridge Region, and for this reason it was omitted from my pre- 

 liminary list of ' Occasional or Accidental Visitors.' Since then, however, Mr. 

 John A. Farley has discovered in the collection of Mr. A. C. Hill of Belmont, 

 and has kindly brought to me for examination, a Cambridge specimen of the King 

 Rail.3 It is apparently a young bird in the first winter plumage. Mr. Hill tells 

 me that he received it alive on the evening of December 30, 1896, from a boy 

 who said that he had caught it in his hands, that afternoon, on the ice at Pout 

 Pond. Although it seemed to be in good health and spirits, running about very 

 actively when liberated in Mr. Hill's poultry-house, it died during the following 

 night. On skinning and dissecting it, Mr. Hill found it to be a male and excep- 

 tionally thin in flesh, even for a representative of its proverbially attenuated tribe. 

 No doubt it had become not only emaciated, but also much weakened, by starva- 

 tion, for otherwise it would hardly have been captured so easily. 



Although generally believed to be but a chance visitor to eastern Massa- 

 chusetts, the King Rail has been found there rather frequently, especially within 



' J. M. Southwick, Ornithologist and Oologist, XIV, 1889, 159. W. Brewster, Auk, VII, 1890, 

 89. 



" R. H. Howe, Jr., and E. Sturtevant, Birds of Rhode Island, 1899, 45. 

 ^]. A. Farley, Auk, XXII, 1905, 409. 



