NATURAL HISTORY OF THE KING RAIL 



53 



nearly touching the ground (fig. 21-3). From this position, he often 

 turned his bent head with bill open toward the female. At one of these 

 meetings the male appeared to be about to mount the female and 

 begin to rise up with his bill still wide open, but the female evidently 

 was not ready for copulation and walked away. 



I observed the same posture many other times, but the birds were 

 usually standing in water. On these occasions the bill usually touched 

 or slightly dipped into the water. Males assumed the pose after pair- 

 ing, when the feeding female that had been at some distance away 

 came within 3 or 4 feet of her mate. On one occasion a male under 

 such circumstances arched his partly opened wings (fig. 21-4) . 



Courtship feeding 



Courtship feeding, a type of symbolic display that aids in main- 

 taining the pair bond, was observed during the courtship, egg laying, 

 and incubation periods of the King Rail. In the Arkansas ricefields, 

 the crayfish was the only food that I ever saw presented to a female. 

 In Delaware Bay marshes, the fiddler crab was used for this purpose. 

 The male usually brings the food item to the female, but sometimes 

 he may stand where he catches the crustacean, holding it in his bill, 

 until the female approaches and takes possession. 



A mated pair of rails that I observed for a number of days on their 

 Delaware breeding territory would descend at low tide from the marsh 

 to a pool in the bed of a tidal creek. The female would usually stand 

 in the pool while the male hunted food for her. He would frequently 

 run up the winding creek bed for 25 yards or so, catch a fiddler crab, 

 and run back to present it to the female. ^Yhy he often traveled such 

 distances when there were plenty of fiddlers nearby is not known. 



During a 2-hour period of observation in an Arkansas ricefield, I 

 saw the male of a pair catch seven crayfish, five of which he presented 

 to his mate. 



PRENESTING ACTIVITY 

 Calling 



As the nesting season approached, the mating call and undertail 

 covert flashing by the male all but ceased, and the addition of a num- 

 ber of calls, mostly soft or subdued, increased the repertoire of the 

 mated pair. Paired rails used such calls as rallying devices when sep- 

 arated or as reassuring answers to one another's calls when together, 



A call frequently given by both birds, particularly as nesting 

 approached, was a very soft poyeek-poyeek-poyeek-poyeek-poyeek-, 

 or wyeek-wyeek-wyeek-wyeek-wyeek-, which seemed to act as an 

 inquiry of the whereabouts of the mate. 



Several males gave one of the more unusual calls, a deep booming 

 sound requiring an effort which caused the body to appear to expand 



