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 buff 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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