1891
May 20
(No 3)
Mass.
Cambridge. - One called cutta at intervals in the
middle of the great meadow. The Virginias were
more noisy. Their pig-note was occasionally heard
but most of them uttered the ki-kic call. Two
in the thicket near where Francis found his
handsomely marked eggs were giving it incessantly 
and a bird which I started from one of the
nests which I robbed reiterated it many times
in protest at my intrusion.  Why is it that we
do not hear this call earlier in the season?
  The Florida Gallinules are back in their old
haunts at last. One gave the prolonged, hen-like
cackle in the swamp where I took the nest 
last year and another the frog-like kup in
the cat-tail bog to the eastward, behind the
brickyard. The former bird called only once
but very loudly & distinctly; the latter repeated 
its cry several times within thirty yards of me
as I was packing a set of Rails' eggs.
  I think that I have at last obtained something
very like proof regarding the author of the cutta cry.
A female Carolina Rail, the bird belonging to the
nest near the brick ice-houses, uttered what was
practically the same sound while standing in plain
sight & within twelve yards of me. She began 
with the musk-rat like murmur then gradually
changed it to cut, cut, cutta the form being
identical with that of the normal cutta note but
the volume of the sound much less and the tone
lacking the usual vibrating quality. It seemed
to me to be a sotto voce rendering of the usual cutta.