The Yellow Rail 
caption, “A New Breeding Record for California,” By William Leon Daw¬ 
son. Tn the same issue of the Journal appears a comprehensive article 
by the Rev. P. B. Peabody, who has followed the fortunes of this rare 
species for twenty years past, in North Dakota, and who probably knows 
more of its habits and nesting than all other observers combined. 
Perhaps there is not another bird in America of fairly general dis¬ 
tribution of whose habits and life history so little is known as of the Yellow 
Rail. Of its notes, indeed, much has been written, but little has been 
agreed upon. The voices of the marsh are often emphatic enough and 
sometimes thrilling, but they remain voices of mystery. Nests have been 
found, but the nests of the Yellow Rail are rarer than those of any of 
the Little Black Rails' Its comings and goings are only dimly outlined 
by the revelations of entangling fence-wires or of merciless high tides. 
According to Mr. Chase W. Littlejohn, this is one of the species ex¬ 
posed by the November high tides which cover the San Francisco marshes. 
At such times the birds have been seen by scores swimming restlessly from 
clump to clump over the inundated flats. At all other times the bird 
Photo by Norman A. Wood 
YELLOW RAIL IN CAPTIVITY 
trusts rather to its amazing ability to thread the maze of salicornia or grass- 
stems unseen, and is one of the hardest of birds to flush. So great is 
the bird’s reluctance to take wing, that when fairly cornered it will some¬ 
times allow itself to be picked up by hand rather than attempt to fly. 
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