The Virginia Rail 



fornia; also "in Toluca Valley, Mexico" (A. O. U.). Winters from Oregon, Utah, and 

 Colorado, south to Lower California and Guatemala; in the lower Mississippi states and 

 from North Carolina to Florida. 



Distribution in California. — Common summer resident in fresh water marshes 

 throughout the State, breeding south to Escondido, San Diego County. Fairly com- 

 mon winter resident west of the Sierras both in fresh and salt marshes, north at least 

 to Suisun (M. V. Z.) and Tomales Bay (Mailliard). 



Authorities. — Newberry (Rallus virginianus), Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv., vol. vi., 

 1857, p. 96 (Vacaville, etc.); Willett, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. 7, 1912, p. 32 (s. Calif., 

 nesting dates, etc.); McLean, Condor, vol. xviii., 1916, p. 229 (Mariposa Co., nesting 

 habits). 



GIVEN an oasis of water of, say, two acres extent, in a pasture desert 

 of barren green ; crowd a company of willows into one end ; add a half acre 

 of bogs crowned with rose bushes; then a little space of clear water; then a 

 jungle of cat-tails at the other end; surround the whole with a thirty-foot 

 border of sedges and coarse grasses cropped close on the desert side, and 

 you have an ideal home for the Virginial Rail and his kind. Poke about 

 carefully in the edge of the rose-bog and you will soon start him, a sly red- 

 dish bird with a red eye and a longish beak. See him some ten feet away 

 standing at the edge of cover, all alert, one foot uplifted and with claws 

 curled down ; or when he plants it gingerly, he alternately perks and lowers 

 his head, as though divided in his mind between darting away and facing 

 it out with you. Simultaneously he cocks his tail forward and relaxes it 

 nervously. If you succeed in looking sufficiently disinterested, he will 

 snatch a slug hastily and watch you furtively with a blood-red eye, to note 

 whether you approve of such actions. If you pass all the tests of good be- 

 havior during the first five minutes, the gentle bird will relax his vigilance 

 and show you how he can walk over half-submerged vegetation without 

 sinking very deep himself, or if in the passage from bog to bog he comes to a 

 space of clear brown water, he will swim as lightly as a duck, but with that 

 odd bobbing motion peculiar to his race. A single false motion, however, 

 will send him scuttling off through the plant-stems and out of sight in a 

 twinkling, cackling in alarm and dudgeon. 



But splash you around never so bravely in hip-boots, or wait you 

 never so patiently, the feeling grows upon you that you are an outsider, so 

 far as the more intimate interests of the swamp are concerned. There is 

 much trafficking in the sedges, which is not meant for human eyes, and the 

 revealing of the life of any rail is much like the natural history of a shoot- 

 ing-star, — one flash, one history. But the shy birds are brave in voice. 

 As the male rail wanders about uneasily in early April searching for a 

 mate he cries, "Keg, keggy, keggy, keggy," in tones which convey an im- 

 pression of a much larger and fiercer bird. The anxiety of a female for her 



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