1893
June 15
(No 3)
Saybrook Ferry, Conn.
  interwoven over the top with an entrance hole in the side;
one was under a flake of dry grass & in addition had a grass
woven roof with the entrance hole leading through a sort of
horozontal funnel of dry grass. Still another was under a
flake of sea weed that had been left on the marsh by the
tide. A nest with young nearly ready to fly was built among
coarse, rank grass on the edge of a pool supported between
several upright stems a foot or more above the water &
in no way concealed.
[margin]Lyme marshes[/margin]
  I found the last-named nest a nest with 4 rotten &
ruined eggs & a Sharp-tails nest with 5 young. I did not
take any of these but Clark was kind enough to give me
three of his nests which I saved carefully.
  Clark showed me the spot (within a few yards) where he took
his Little Black Rail's nest & 9 eggs. The nest was in a bed of
the short, light & green, fur-like grass about 100 yards from
the nearest bed of cat-tails & 200 yards or more from the river.
[margin]Nest of
Black Rail[/margin]
  As we were sitting on a ledge on the wooded island smoking,
[delete]after[/delete] having just finished lunch, we heard the cutta cry
repeated rapidly a few times in a small bed of cat tails near
by & the next moment two Virginia Rails flew out over
the open marsh, doubling & twisting, one following the other
closely. After flying a few rods they turned back & alighted
in the flags where the cutta sound began again. We went
directly to the spot & drove out both birds. One ran across
a wide bed of drift to another bed of flags, the other flew
to a belt of bushes. One bird called pcuk as we were
beating the flags & acted as if she had young. We found
two nests, apparently of the Va Rail, in these flags. Both were
built up among the flags to a height of a foot or more, their 
bases resting on the solid ground.
[margin]The authorship
of the cutta
cry traced
to the 
Va Rail[/margin]