BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



29 



arrives in this region about the first week in May. During the latter 

 part of August and early in September, it is not uncommon to find 

 this species in parties numbering from half a dozen to twenty indi- 

 viduals in the swamps and wet grassy meadows. The Messrs. Baird 

 mention this species among the natives of Cumberland county. Al- 

 though I have never discovered their nests, I am fully convinced that 

 they oftentimes breed with us. Prof. E. A. Samuels, of Boston, Mass., 

 in his interesting and instructive work entitled u Our Northern and 

 Eastern Birds" gives the following account of nests and eggs : " Early 

 in May the season of incubation commences. The nest is constructed 

 of pieces of straw and weeds, arranged in a large pile, and hollowed to 

 the depth of an inch or more : it is usually placed in a tussock of 

 grass or beneath a piece of turf. A specimen, which I found in Ded- 

 ham meadows, was built beneath some thick cranberry-vines, and I 

 have known of others being placed in small brier patches ; but gen- 

 erally the fabric is built in an open meadow, usually on an elevated 

 tussock in a boggy tract of ground. The eggs vary from five to eight 

 or ten in number; their form is almost always an exact ovoidal. 

 Their color is a yellow-drab, with a faint-olivaceous tint, different 

 from the color of any of our other Rail's eggs. They vary in dimen- 

 sions from 1.35 by 1 inch (Quincy, Mass.) to 1.15 by .85 inch (Albion, 

 Wis.). The average size is about 1.26 by 1.92 (Cambridge and Need- 

 ham, Mass.)." 



FOOD. 



During fall migrations, when this species is shot in great numbers 

 about the reedy shores of the large rivers, their diet is principally of 

 a vegetal character ; when breeding it is said they subsist chiefly on 

 insects and their larvae. 



