The Sora Rail 
299 
Precocious 
Chicks 
of weeds, grasses, rushes, etc. ; sometimes a slight platform, or a mere 
shallow basket. Often it is hung among cattails, several inches clear of 
the water, with a pathway of trampled blades leading to it, while nest 
and all are screened by the over-arching flags, and, occasionally, one is 
found in a tussock on the bank of a brook. The eggs vary from six to 
fifteen in number, and are buffy white, but deeper in shade than those of 
the \ irginia Rail, and heavily spotted with brown and purple. 
Nelson says that the parents desert their nests and break their eggs 
when floods submerge their homes. The young Rails just from the egg 
are fascinating and supremely comical mites — little balls of down, black 
as jet, each with a bright-red protuberance at the base of the bill, and an 
air of pert defiance. It is a very clown ! So says Dawson, who came upon 
a brood just hatching. All took to their heels, except 
two luckless wights not yet out of the egg. At his ap- 
proach one more egg flew open, and a little black rascal 
rolled out, shook its natal coat, tumbled ofif the nest, and started to swim 
ofif to safety. 
The young of this bird have often been mistaken for those of the 
little Black Rail. They are certainly both small and sable. When they 
once leave the nest they are constantly in danger. Most of the larger 
animals and birds of the marshes, from the Sandhill Crane down to the 
mink, devour the eggs and young of Rails wherever they find them. In 
the water, snakes, frogs, fish, and turtles lie constantly in wait to swallow 
them. They soon become experts in climbing and hiding. They can 
clamber up and down the water-plants, or run through them over the 
water by clinging to the upright stems. They swim more like a chicken 
than like a duck, nodding their little heads comically as they advance. 
Necessity soon teaches them to drop into the water and dive like a stone 
to safety. 
As the autumn nights grow cooler migration begins. The ancients 
believed that the Rails passed the winter in the mud at the bottom of 
ponds, changing into frogs. Their frog-like notes, and the clmg with 
which they sometimes dive, favored this delusion ; also, the sudden dis- 
appearance of all the Soras on a frosty night seemed suspicious. Some 
still, moonlit night, after a north wind, the Rails van- 
ished ; on the next morning ice covered the marshes, so 
the explanation that they had dived to escape the ice 
gained credence. Audubon alluded to this matter in the following pas- 
sage in Volume V of his Birds of America: 
“The most curious habit or instinct of this species is the nicety of 
sense by which they ascertain the last moment they can remain at any of 
their feeding grounds at which they tarry in autumn. One day you may 
see or hear Soras in their favorite marshes, you may be aware of their 
presence in the dusk of the evening ; but when you return to the place 
early next morning they are all gone. Yesterday the weather was mild, 
to-day it is cold and raw ; and no doubt the Soras were aware that a 
Migratory 
Habits 
