226 BIRDS 



'k-h-'h-huk imitated by alleged sportsmen in search 

 of a mere trifle of flesh that they fill with shot. 



THE CLAPPER RAII, 



Salt marshes, mangrove swamps, and grassy fields along 

 the seacoast contain more of these little gray skulkers than 

 the keenest 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 cackle like a mechani- 

 cal toy, that is taken up and repeated by each member 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 grain fields in autumn. 

 Yet this is sometimes called the big rail, measuring, as it 

 does, about a foot in length. 



The Coot 



Length — 14 to 16 inches. 



Male and Female — General color slate; very dark on head 

 and neck, lighter on under parts; edge of wing, tips of 

 secondaries, and space below tail, white. Bill ivory 

 white; two brownish spots near tip, the same shade as 

 the horny plate on front of head a characteristic mark. 

 Legs and feet pale green, the latter with scalloped lobes. 



Range — ^North America at large, from Greenland and 



