The Yellow Rail 



Taken in North Dakota 



That the Yellow Rail winters with us, at least upon the marshes trib- 

 utary to San Francisco Bay, there can be no doubt. It is almost equally 

 certain that the bird does not breed in the State, nor indeed anywhere west 



ofthe Rocky 

 Mountains. It is 

 rather one of those 

 species which, like 

 the Marbled God- 

 wit, nests in the 

 Dakotas and the 

 northern interior 

 generally and comes 

 west, as well as 

 south to California, 

 to spend a restful 

 winter. There are 

 two records for 

 southern California 

 based on specimens, 

 and one sight record 

 for Santa Barbara 1 

 in which I do not 

 myself place im- 

 plicit confidence. 



' 'The heavy 

 snows of the past 

 winter, the deepest in decades, convinced us that there was no need for 

 haste. So as we skirted, on the 6th day of June, the eastern bases of the 

 Sierra Nevada Mountains en route to Mammoth Camp, we accepted the 

 challenge of a Yellow-headed Blackbird sounding from a wayside swamp 

 and deployed for investigation. The place was Long Valley, a well- 

 watered plateau in southern Mono County, and the altitude was some- 

 thing over 7000 feet. I had passed the swamp unheeding a dozen times 

 before, in previous seasons; but one of my assistants, Lawrence Stevens, 

 had never seen a Yellow-head's nest, and was curious. A broad stretch 

 of shallow water, say quarter of a mile wide and a mile long, is here fed 

 by mountain springs, and bears a complete investiture of rank grasses or 

 dwarf sedges, save where, centrally, it supports low beds of tules, or irrupts 

 in pools so charged with mineral content that vegetation will not grow. 

 Cattle tramp the edges in droves, but apparently avoid the central portion 

 of the swamp because of its treacherous nature. 



1 Dec. 26, 1914. Reported in Bird-Lore. Vol. XVII., Jan.-Feb., 1915, p. 47. 

 1546 



n/8 YELLOW RAIL, IN SITU 



INVESTING GRASSES PARTED 



Photo by Rev. P. B. Peabody 



