The California Clapper Rail 
Where this shelter is denied them, a heavy stand of salicornia will do, but 
especially one where drift material is upborne as a sort of canopy by the 
tops of the growing plants. A heavy platform of similar drift material, 
Taken in San Mateo County Photo by the Author 
NEST AND EGGS OF CALIFORNIA CLAPPER RAIL 
dead grasses and dried tule-stems, is built up on the sodden ground to a 
height of four or five inches. Here in a hollow seven inches across and from 
one to three inches in depth, a complement of eight or nine eggs is placed. 
The eggs are of a “lovely” ivory-yellow color, sparingly dotted and spotted 
with liver-brown or chocolate. 
The nest in most cases is approached by a runway, a sort of tunnel 
driven through the matted vegetation, and this sometimes reaches quite to 
the bank of the nearest tide-gut. Sometimes the sitting bird will flush only 
under the tap of a beating-stick—the collector’s divining rod—but oftener 
it manages to anticipate the collector’s approach by a run of four or five 
feet previous to rising. One bird which I put up was so flustered that she 
fell souse into the water and swam off looking over her shoulder. 
Not only have these poor birds suffered terribly at the hands of gun¬ 
ners, but their numbers have been still further reduced by the depredations 
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