4 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVII 
which held a dead chick. The nest was a slightly concave platform composed 
of coarse, huffy rushes and grasses, and was approximately four inches thick 
and nine and a half inches across. It was rather loosely attached to the reeds 
and rushes five inches above the water. 
To me the nest was of especial interest, from the fact that it was in a small 
marsh of less than an acre in size, and not over a hundred yards north of a 
ranch house, the occupants of which were wont to pass within fifty feet of the 
nest several times a day. Generally the birds select a marsh far distant from 
any one of the few houses on that uncultivated prairie. 
June 6 found me in the same region, about six miles south of Houston, 
searching the marshes and ponds for nests of the Least Bittern and Purple 
Gallinule. On the 30th I had been quite successful, for had I not located a nest 
of each containing five eggs? In the enthusiasm of the new discoveries I laid 
Fig. 1. At the nest of the Louisiana Clapper Rail in a marsh near Houston, 
Texas. The few scrubby persimmon trees in the background form the only 
shelter for miles. 
aside my season’s incubus — the search for a nest of friend Rallies — and took to 
the marshes in an effort to locate further nests of those two birds. 
Merely as a matter of form, for that was one of my two regular routes 
when out abirding, I stopped at a favorite colony of the Florida Red-wing 
( Agelaius phoeniceus phoeniceus ) by the side of the road six miles from the 
city, and made a circuit of th’e two-acre marsh, checking the various birds and 
making a casual search for nests. Among the birds cheeked were two Mary- 
land Yellow-throats, male and female, a pair of birds whose nest had success- 
fully eluded me from year to year. It is true that on June 1, 1911, I found 
their nest in the tall bull-rushes near one side of the marsh, but not until the 
young were preparing to leave. Very naturally, what I wished to find was a 
nest containing eggs. 
So I stopped, shed my coat and hung it on a tiny persimmon tree growing 
