CLAPPER RAIL. 531 
November. I have no doabt but many of them linger in the low 
woods and marshes of the Southern States during winter. 
This species.is ten inches long, and fourteen inches in extent; 
bill, dusky red; cheeks and stripe over the eye, ash, over the lores and 
at the lower eyelid, white; iris of the eye, red; crown and whole 
upper parts, black, streaked with brown, the centre of each feather 
_ being black ; wing-coverts, hazel brown, inclining to chestnut ; quills, 
plain deep. dusky; -chin, white;. throat, breast, and belly, orange 
“brown ; sides and vent, black, tipped with white; legs and feet, dull 
red brown ;, edge of the bend of the wing, white. 
The female is about half an inch shorter, and differs from the male, 
in having the breast much paler; not of so bright a reddish brown; 
there is also more white on the chin and throat. 
When seen, which is very rarely, these birds stand or run with the 
tall erect, which they frequently jerk upwards. They fly with the 
legs hanging, generally-but a short distance; and the moment they 
‘alight, run off with great speed. 
1 
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CLAPPER RAIL.—RALLUS CREPITANS:—Fic. 249. 
Arct. Zool. No. 407. — Turt. Syst. p. 430. — Lath. Syn. iii. p. 229, No. 2.— 
Ind. Orn. p. 156, No. 2. — Peale’s Museum, No, 4400. 
RALLUS CREPITANS, —Gmeun. 
Rallus crepitans, Bonap. Synop. p. 333. 
Tus is a very numerous and well-known species, inhabiting our 
whole Atlantic coast from New England to Florida. It is designated 
by different names, such as the Mud Hen, Clapper Rail, Meadow 
Clapper, Big Rail, &c. &c. Though occasionally found along the 
swampy shores and tide waters of our large rivers, its principal resi- 
dence is in the salt marshes. It is a bird of passage, arriving on the 
coast of New Jersey about the 20th of April, and retiring again late 
in September. I suspect that many of them winter in the marshes of 
Georgia and Florida, having heard them very numerous at the mouth 
of Savannah River in the month of February. Coasters and fishermen 
often hear them while on their migrations, in spring, generally a little 
before daybreak. The shores of New Jersey, within the beach, con- 
sisting of an immense extent of flat marsh, covered with a coarse - 
reedy grass, and occasionally overflowed by the sea, by which it is 
also cut up into innumerable islands by narrow inlets, seem to be the 
favorite breeding-place for these birds, as they are there acknowledged 
to be more than double in number to all other marsh fowl. 
The Clapper Rail, or, as it is generally called, the Mud Hen, soon 
announces its arrival in the salt marshes, by its loud, harsh, and 
incessant cackling, which very much resembles that of a Guinea fowl. 
' This noise is most general during the night, and is said to be always 
- greatest before a storm. About the 20th of May, they generally com- 
