RAILS, GALLINULES, COOTS 



(Family Rallidce) 



Clapper Rail 



(Rallus longirostris crepitans) 



Called also: MARSH, OR MUD HEN; BIG RAIL; SALT- 

 WATER MEADOW HEN 



Length — 14 to 16 inches. 



Male and Female — Upper parts pale olive varied with gray, each 

 feather having a wide gray margin ; more grayish brown on 

 wings and tail, and cinnamon brown on wing coverts. 

 Line above eye and the throat white, merging into the gray- 

 ish buflf neck and breast ; sides and underneath brownish 

 gray barred with white. Body much compressed. Bill 

 longer than head, and yellowish brown, the same color as 

 legs. Young fledgelings black. 



Range — Atlantic and Gulf coasts of United States, nesting from 

 Connecticut southward, and resident south of the Potomac. 



Season — April to October, north of Washington. 



Salt marshes, mangrove swamps, and grassy fields along the 

 seacoast contain more of these little gray skulkers than the keen- 

 est eye suspects ; and were it not for their incessant chattering, 

 who would ever know they had come up from the south to 

 spend the summer ? At the nesting season there can be no 

 noisier birds anywhere than these; the marshes echo with their 

 " long, rolling cry," that is taken up and repeated by each mem- 

 ber of the community, until the chorus attracts every gunner to 

 the place. Immense numbers of the compressed, thin bodies, 

 that often measure no more than an inch and a quarter through 

 the breast, find their way to the city markets from the New 

 Jersey salt meadows, after they have taken on a little fat in the 

 wild oat fields. " As thin as a rail " is a suggestive saying, indeed, 

 to the cook who has picked one. 



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