The California Black Rail 



or a chicken, a race that has, moreover, furnished giants, such as the 

 Notornis or "Aioho," of New Zealand, which has a body two feet long. 

 So the sparrow-sized body of Coturniculus proclaims it a pygmy among its 

 kind and arouses our interest at once. Now dye the bird the color of 

 swamp muck, and set it to playing hide-and-seek in a situation where it 

 has every advantage of obscurity, and you have issued an ornithological 

 challenge whose piquancy is felt by every amateur and fought for by every 

 professional. Although the bird is probably to be found at some season 

 of the year in every considerable tidal marsh in the Pacific Coast States, 

 and may occur extensively inland, every record of the occurrence of the 

 California Black Rail outside of San Diego is eagerly scanned; and those 

 who have even seen the bird in life are a small and select company. 



The comings and goings of a Black Rail are as obscure as those of a 

 meadow mouse. One's chances of seeing it casually are about as good as 

 those of picking up a lost coin of a specified denomination. The writer, 

 who has seen something of swamp life, has glimpsed only two in his ex- 

 perience, one straggling across a country road at dusk, the other flushing 

 sharply from his feet in the Estero at Santa Barbara — only to be lost a 

 moment later, and forever, when it plumped into the salicornia a dozen 

 feet away. Only in the special circumstance of high tides may one hope 

 to see the bird in numbers, and these are manifestly unlawful occasions, 

 like a shipwreck or a hotel fire at night. 



Coturniculus broke into print when, in 1874, Ridgway described a 

 bird, a waif picked up on the Farallon Islands, as Porzana jamaicensis 

 var. coturniculus Baird [MS]. From this circumstance it was long known 

 as the Farallon Rail, even after mainland records began to appear. Dr. 

 Brewster, of Boston, ever alert in matters of Californian ornithology, 

 reviewed, in 1907, ' the evidences of distribution and relationship presented 

 by twenty-six skins, of which twenty-two had been collected by Mr. C. A. 

 Allen at Point Reyes, October 24th to November 26th, 1897 — evidently 

 under the circumstances of high tide already mentioned. Mr. J. H. 

 Bowles established "farthest north," November 10th, 1910, by taking 

 three specimens near Tacoma, Washington (unless we accept the afhrrra- 

 tion of Mr. J. W. Merritt, of Spokane, that he had shot the Black Rail 

 near Sprague, Washington, and had seen it "repeatedly" thereabouts). 

 A recent report 2 of an injured bird picked up on the street at San Bernar- 

 dino confirms our belief that the California Black Rail is at least partially 

 migratory, and that its movements are not confined to the coastal marshes. 



To the oologists of San Diego, however, belongs the chief credit 

 for having brought the ways of the California Black Rail to light. 



'Auk. Vol. XXIV.. April, 1007, pp. 205-210. 



2 Mr. Edward Wall in Condor. Vol. XXI.. Nov. 1919. p. 238. 



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DSI 



