cien € iL. 
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THE CLAPPER RAIL. 605 
In the matter of food the Clappers are not over particular. 
They feed indiscriminately on all the small animals they find 
in the marsh, as well as on seeds. The little crabs known 
as "mud-fiddlers," however, are, in this locality, the chief 
article in their billof fare. These have squarish bodies, gen- 
erally less than an inch long; the smaller ones are swallowed 
whole; the larger ones get their legs, and particularly their 
one great claw, beaten off, before they find rest at last in a 
rail’s gizzard. If one has the patience and good luck to be 
able to watch rails when the birds are securing and disposing 
of their prey, he will see that they do it much after the 
fashion of the smaller herons, as the Green, for instance. 
But the rails race after their meals more than herons do; 
there is less patient lying in wait, and altogether less 
“action” in the final blow. 
Rails are among the most harmless and inoffensive of 
birds. All that they seem to want is to be let alone. But 
when wounded and caught, they make the best fight they can, 
and show good spirit. The bill is too slender and weak to 
be much of a weapon, and they scarcely attempt to use it; 
relying rather upon their sharp claws, which they employ to 
considerable effect. Í 
A colony of rails, goes far towards relieving a marsh of 
part of its monotony. Retiring and unfamiliar as they are, 
and seldom seen, considering their immense numbers, yet 
they have at times a highly effective way of asserting them- 
selves. -Silent during a great part of the year, or at most 
only indulging in a spasmodic croak now and then, during 
the breeding season they are about the noisiest birds to be 
' found anywhere. Let a gun be fired in the marsh, and like 
the reverberating echoes of the report, a hundred cries come 
instantly from as many startled throats. The noise spreads 
on all sides, like ripples on the water at the plash of a stone, 
- till it dies away in the distance, only however to be repeated 
again upon the slightest provocation—or none. In the 
morning and evening, particularly, the rails seem perfectly 
P. 
