1893
May 18
( No 11)      
East Lexington, Mass.

Faxon is very sure that he heard a Florida Gallinule call in the Reservoir pond                
one day (May 13th) last year. this season he saw one? them on the
9th of may and on several occasions since. To-day we
heard and saw two, a male and female, doubtless mated
birds as they were both in the same place, a long,
narrow belt of button bushes intermingled with cat tail
flags. the male was very bold and fearless, showing himself
freely outside the bushes, frequently swimming out into
the middle of a broad space of open water and twice
crossing it to the shore of the island where he fed
among some sparse growing flags that afforded him no
real [?].  Once he climbed quickly up into a
leafless button bush and perching on a branch about
three feet above the water spent some time there preening
his feathers and dosing, sitting in a [?] attitude
with neck down in & feathers suffled, looking precisely
like a small black hen on the roost.
[margin] Florida Gallinules[/margin]


On the water he was a most graceful and beatiful
creature, especially when feeding, for there the? slender head
and neck were continually in motion, nodding at each
stroke of the feet and waving to & fro with [?] 
snake - like curves. the scarlet frontal ??? was layer
and more brilliant than in the bird which we watched in
the Fresh Pond swamps in 1890. We satisfied ourselves to-day
that there is no infalt [?] of this past but the red
appeared to vary much in depth & B???, from time to time,
& we suspected that the variations  were under the birds'
control. the head in profile presented the appearance of
having been sliced off on the forehaed but perhaps this
is merely because of the absence of feathers on this part.
This male Gallinule was one of [?] water fowl