habits of the rails
1875 May 7- 1875
May 7 [May 7, 1875] pomp of a turkey cock, uttering
all the time the squealing above
referred to. Then the object of his
attentions apparently becoming tired
of them, would skulk off again
pursued closely as before. Often
where the water became too deep for 
wading, she would swim, her attentive
lover following prettily in her wake.
At length becoming tired of watching
all this and wanting the pair 
badly to mount, I fired and killed
the [male], wounding, and with another
shot securing, the [female]. The song of
Porzana Carolina is evidently the
ka-e previously noted. There are
also at least [delete]three[/delete] two other notes; the
cackling one, cutter, cutter, cutter:
a very rapidly enunciated cry of
eight or ten syllables, descending the
scale so rapidly as almost to merit
the appellation of a trill: and a 
single sharp, quick kep, the cry
of alarm used indiscriminately by
both sexes & by the young birds
in autumn. Rallus Virginianus
has only two calls that I am sure
of at present: the first of which I
think is the song of the [male] is
a quick rasping note [delete]of a number[/delete]
repeated a number of times in
succession and utterly undescribable.
I can compare it only to a certain
complaining sound made by a
pig when hungry. The other is
[margin][This, as we did not learn until long afterward, is the characteristic song of Rallus virginianus][/margin]