The Sora Rail 
swamp, but usually in a rather open situation. Sometimes a tussock of 
grass is used, and the growing blades curl over to conceal this anchored 
ark of bulrushes. The Sora is a little more prolific than her cousin, the 
Virginia, a dozen eggs being commonly found, and fourteen 
and fifteen not infrequently. In the latter 
case the eggs are apt to be in two layers. 
The ochraceous cast 
of the ground-color is 
unmistakable, and the 
spots are both more 
numerous and of a 
duller brown t h a rr 
those of R. virgini- 
anus. 
Nothing could be 
at once more interest¬ 
ing and more comical 
than the appearance 
of a young Sora just 
out of the shell. He 
is, to begin with, a ball 
of down as black as 
jet, and he has a most 
ridiculous tuft of 
orange chin whiskers. Add to this a bright red protuberance at the base of 
the upper mandible and an air of defiance, and you have a very clown. 
And such precocity! Once, in a secluded spot, I came upon a nestful at 
the critical time. Hearing my distant footsteps most of the brood had 
taken to their new-found heels, leaving two luckless wights in ova. At 
my approach one more prison door flew open. The absurd fluff-ball rolled 
out, shook itself, grasped the situation, promptly tumbled over the side 
of the nest, and started to swim across a six-foot pool to safety. 
A lifetime of prowling in the swamps will not give a person any ade¬ 
quate conception of the total number of Sora Rails. From the migrations, 
however, we are able to guess that it must be enormous. During the mi¬ 
grations, which take place at night, the birds straggle over the landscape 
at low elevation and quite irrespective of the fly-lines observed by many 
other species. As a consequence, many Soras fall victim to telephone wires 
or even barb-wire fences; and not a few are picked up in town in the street 
or in the garden, or wherever dawn has overtaken the weary traveler. 
Such an occurrence affords the man on the street his only glimpse of this 
pixy of the marshes, which makes appeal alike for its oddity and for its 
Taken in San Diego Photo by L. Huey and D. R. Dickey 
SORA RAIL: A “HAND-PICKED" SPECIMEN 
J 543 
