The Yuma Clapper Rail 



meet one of these engaging waifs of the swamp without wanting to squeeze 

 it, real hard. 



Eventide, also, is the time for that discursive song which won for our 

 hero the name "Clapper." In a populous marsh one may hear six or seven 

 birds at once uttering these peculiar, strident, iterative calls. The notes 

 are very hard to characterize. Some one, I suppose, must have likened 

 them to the sound of a fence-board struck by a stick. To me they sound 

 more like the cheep of a baby Blackbird greatly exaggerated. With head 

 and neck stretched vertically, the bird delights to roll out ten or a dozen 

 of these notes in a series, rallentando sostentuto or rallentando et diminuendo, 

 as the case may be. 



There is, I suppose, no bird more surely doomed to disappear before 

 the inroads of civilization than this humble resident of our coastal marshes. 

 A mere stretch of level land, unoccupied, is an abomination to a Los An- 

 geles real estate agent. He will have it diked and drained and he will cover 

 it with summer hotels, or billboards at the very least. And now that the 

 coastal highway system has been completed, there is not a two by four 

 patch of marsh land which is not ransacked by guns and dogs or small boys 

 a dozen times a year. C'est le guerre. Que voulez vous? 



No. 304 



Yuma Clapper Rail 



Rallus yumanensis Dickey. 



Description. — Similar to Rallus levipes, but outer superior wing-coverts and 

 alula duller and more olivaceous; the coloration of underparts paler; tarsus and bill 

 more slender. 



Range. — "So far as known, the fresh water riparian strip along the Colorado 

 River above Yuma, and adjacent irrigation canals in the vicinity of Laguna Dam. 

 The dates of capture, together with a field notation by the collector (May 27, 'laying') 

 definitely indicate summer residence in this region and association. The winter range 

 is at present unknown" (Dickey). 



Authority. — Dickey (Rallus yumanensis), Auk, vol. xl., 1923, p. 90 (orig. 

 desc. ; type locality, Bard, Imperial Co.). 



TO MR. DONALD R. DICKEY, of Pasadena, seconded by his able 

 field lieutenants, Messrs. A. van Rossem and Laurence Huey and Mrs. 

 May Canfield (an aunt of the last-named), has fallen the good fortune of 

 writing a considerable amount of ornithological history in California. It 

 was Mrs. Canfield 's gun which brought down this rara avis, which Mr. 

 Dickey's enthusiasm has elaborated as a new species; and surely great 



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