117 
CLAPPER RAIL. 
RJILLUS CREPITANS. 
[Plate LXIL— Fig. 2.] 
Arct. Zool. No. 407.-LATH. Syn. v. 3, p. 229, No. 2.-Ind. Orn. p. 756. No. 2 .-Peale’s 
Museum^ No. 4400. 
THIS is a very numerous and well known species, inhabiting 
our whole Atlantic coast from New England to Florida. It is de- 
signated by different names, such as the Mud-hen, Clapper Rail, 
Meadow-clapper, Big Rail, See. Tho occasionally found along 
the swampy shores and tide waters of our large rivers, its princi- 
pal residence is in the salt marshes. It is a bird of passage, ar- 
riving on the coast of New Jersey about the twentieth of April, and 
retiring again late in September. I suspect that they winter in the 
marshes of Georgia and Florida, having heard them very numerous 
at the mouth of Savannah river, in the month of February. Coast- 
ers and fishermen often hear them while on their migrations, m 
spring, generally a little before daybreak. The shores of New 
Jersey, within the beach, consisting of an immense extent of flat 
marsh, covered with a coarse reedy grass, and occasionally over- 
flowed by the sea, by which it is also cut up into innumerable 
islands by narrow inlets, seem to be the favorite breeding places for 
these birds, as they are there acknowledged to be more than double 
in number to all other marsh fowl. 
The Clapper Rail, or, as it is generally called, the Mud-hen, 
soon announces its arrival in the salt marshes, by its loud, harsh 
and incessant cackling, which very much resembles that of a 
Guinea-fowl. This noise is most general during the night ; and is 
said to be always greatest before a storm. About the twentieth 
2 G 
VOL. Vll. 
