298 
The Sora Rail 
Market- 
Shooting 
some of the notes were frog-like, but most of them were like those of a 
bird. A common call or song has been rendered ker wee ; and the Sora 
has a high “whinny” — also notes like peeping chickens. 
The Rail is a bird of mystery. I always feel like putting an inter- 
rogation-point after the name. About the habits of no other common 
birds do we know so little. The Sora Rail is one of the most abundant 
birds of North America, and has been sold in the mar- 
kets by thousands for more than a century. It breeds 
commonly, even abundantly, over a great part of the 
United States and Canada ; yet most of its habits, and, perhaps, many of 
its notes, are still largely its own secret. While floating in a light canoe 
down the sluggish current of some marsh-bordered river in September 
you may watch the Sora silently stealing along the muddy margin, poking 
things with its short yellow bill, and gently jetting its tail; or in tramp- 
ing along the edge of the marsh you may see one flutter up, just above 
the grass and reeds, and fly awkwardly, with dangling legs, across some 
slimy spool, to drop clumsily out of sight again, as in the accompanying 
picture. This is about all the observant traveller ever sees of the bird. 
Rails are timid, skulking fowls and pass the greater part of their lives 
wading under cover of water-plants or squeezing between the grass- 
stems. They have done this so much that their little bodies have become 
compressed from side to side, and they can voluntarily 
shrink in width, so as to push their way between stems 
apparently only half an inch apart. Hence the pro- 
verbial phrase “thin as a rail.” 
Rails make for themselves dark and winding passages among the 
reeds, grasses, and rushes, along which they may run swiftly to escape 
four-footed enemies, and, at the same time, remain concealed from 
winged foes. They come out into the open when they beheve that the 
coast is clear, with no enemy in sight, or at night, when hawks are 
absent. The Black Rail has kept its secrets so well that, although a cen- 
tury has elapsed since Americans began to study ornithology, Arthur T. 
Wayne, in 1904, was the first person to see the mother-bird on her nest. 
This was in South Carolina. . Perhaps some investigator of the future 
may build a watch-tower in a marsh and study the habits of the marsh- 
folk with a spy-glass, but until something of this sort is undertaken we 
are likely to know little of Rails’ habits. The curiosity of these birds, 
however, may become of advantage to the observer, as they have been 
known to approach a hunter lying in wait for ducks 
Curiosity and peck his clothing, boots, or gunbarrel. A quiet 
man is to them a wonder, for they are accustomed to 
associate much noise and movement with all humankind. 
The Sora nests about the borders of prairie sloughs, in the soft, 
dense grasses, or sometimes on a tussock. In the marshes of the East 
the nest is often placed in a bunch of coarse grass, or among the cattail- 
Thin as 
a Rail 
flags or other rushes. 
It is sometimes a bulky, arched structure, made 
