336 



FIELD ZOOLOGY. 



The eggs of the rails are many in number and are 

 placed in nests built of reeds and rushes, sticks and 

 grasses, placed upon the ground. Their young are 

 generally black-downy at birth, no matter what the adult 

 color may be. 



The cranes as a family, breed in the north, some of 

 them going as far as Manitoba and the Alaska country; 



they winter in Mexico 

 and the Gulf States. 

 Rails and gallinules and 

 coots are more varied in 

 their range, some of the 

 rails migrating as far 

 north as Labrador to 

 raise their young. Coots 

 may go even into Green- 

 land, though they are 

 much more nearly aqua- 

 tic in their habits than 

 are the rails; their feet 

 reveal this fact. (Fig. 

 113.) Coots also breed 

 in the southern and middle part of their range, which ex- 

 tends from Alaska to southern Mexico. The gallinules 

 have a more southern range on the whole, breeding 

 as far north as Massachusetts, spreading inland to the 

 Mississippi, and going south to the Gulf States and 

 well down into Mexico. 



Fig. 113. — Lobate foot of a coot. 



