The Yellow Rail 



caption, "A New Breeding Record for California," by William Leon Daw- 

 son. In the same issue of the Journal appears a comprehensive article 

 by the Rev. P. B. Peabody, who has followed the fortunes of this rare 

 species for twenty years past, in North Dakota, and who probably knows 

 more of its habits and nesting than all other observers combined. 



Perhaps there is not another bird in America of fairly general dis- 

 tribution of whose habits and life history so little is known as of the Yellow 

 Rail. Of its notes, indeed, much has been written, but little has been 

 agreed upon. The voices of the marsh are often emphatic enough and 

 sometimes thrilling, but they remain voices of mystery. Nests have been 

 found, but the nests of the Yellow Rail are rarer than those of any of 

 the Little Black Rails. Its comings and goings are only dimly outlined 

 by the revelations of entangling fence-wires or of merciless high tides. 



According to Mr. Chase W. Littlejohn, this is one of the species ex- 

 posed by the November high tides which cover the San Francisco marshes. 

 At such times the birds have been seen by scores swimming restlessly from 

 clump to clump over the inundated flats. At all other times the bird 



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YELLOW RAIL IN CAPTIVITY 



Photo by Norman A. Wood 



trusts rather to its amazing ability to thread the maze of salicornia or grass- 

 stems unseen, and is one of the hardest of birds to flush. So great is 

 the bird's reluctance to take wing, that when fairly cornered it will some- 

 times allow itself to be picked up by hand rather than attempt to fly. 



1545 



