NAffURAL HISTORY OF THE KING RAIL 



35 



land-locked fresh- water marshes. Montagna and Wimsatt (1942, p. 

 434r-436) collected a female on Rogue Island 11 miles off the coast be- 

 tween Hog and Cobb Islands. The specimen had a fully developed 

 swollen brood patch, and its oviduct contained an egg with shell. 



There are several records from Chincoteague Island. Robert E. 

 Stewart encountered paired adult King and Clapper Rails with a 

 brood in a salt meadow cordgrass marsh on this coastal island. The 

 Chincoteague salt marshes are one of the important Clapper Rail 

 hunting grounds along the Atlantic Coast, and King Rails occasion- 

 ally turn up in hunters' bags. 



One of the best King Rail areas on the bay side of the eastern shore 

 peninsula is Bullbegger Creek, a tributary of the Pocomoke River. 

 Big cordgrass is the dominant plant in this creek marsh. 



At Knott's Island, at the head of Currituck Sound, partly in Vir- 

 ginia and partly in North Carolina, A. J. Duvall (1937, p. 462) and 

 party collected a female IGng Rail and five chicks along a roadway 

 in a salt marsh on June 1, 1936. 



Maryland Eastern Shore 



In Maryland the King Rail is mainly associated with tidal marshes 

 of the Chesapeake Bay system, and is found in greatest numbers in the 

 extensive brackish tidal-river marshes of the Eastern Shore, especially 

 in the vast area of fresh and brackish bay marshes of Dorchester 

 County (see R. E. Stewart, 1962, for a description of Maryland Chesa- 

 peake Bay marsh communities). In this area, the following plants are 

 usually present as pure stands or are found in some combination in 

 areas where King Rails occur : big cordgrass, broad-leaf and narrow- 

 leaf cattail {Typha latifolia and T. angustifolia)^ Olney's three- 

 square, switchgrass {Panicum virgatum)^ softrush, and rosemallow 

 {Hibiscus moscheutos) . 



The importance of big cordgrass in the Maryland section of the 

 Chesapeake Bay is comparable to that in Tidewater Virginia. 



In the brackish tidal-river marsh community of the Choptank River 

 at Dover Bridge between Talbot and Caroline Counties, a muskrat 

 trapper caught 50 King Rails in a single season (January 1 to March 

 16). Most of the birds were caught where big cordgrass was dominant 

 but usually mixed with Olney's three-square and switchgrass. Because 

 of the sparseness of winter marsh cover. King Rails often seek means 

 of escape and places for hiding different from those used during the 

 rest of the year. A muskrat trapper on the Choptank River in Mary- 

 land reports that whenever he surprises a rail along a tidal gut in 

 the marsh it almost invariably darts into a muskrat hole along an 

 embankment. 



Robert E. Stewart has observed both King and Clapper Rails in the 

 same big cordgrass marsh along Ape Hole Creek in Somerset County. 



