mae AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
Miele Ne Ls) AU DUB.ON SO CLE TY 
ROOSEVELT ROAD AND LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO 5, ILL. 
Number 84 December, 1952 
Aine NO 5 
ow ay NEE 
Tey WANA 
Fig. 1: Baby Sora Rail 3% hours old 
A Baby Sora Rail 
By MARGARET M. NICE 
WHEN I WENT to the hatchery at the Delta Waterfowl Research Station 
at Delta, Manitoba at 5 p.m. June 26, I found a baby Porzana carolina not 
yet dry. Don Sutton had discovered a nest with a pipped egg and it had 
hatched in his hand in the canoe at about 4:30. The bird’s down was black, 
and its head somewhat bald; it had a red knob on its yellow bill and 
underneath a bunch of orange curls. It was something like a miniature 
Coot, but mostly it made me think of a tiny gnome. It weighed 5.5 grams. 
At 5:15 it took a bit of egg and turkey starter from the forceps. At 7:30 
it scratched its head, then preened its breast and wings (Fig. 1). It 
jumped at the egg in the forceps. I put it in the incubator for the night. 
The next morning, the baby Rail snatched at food when I held the 
forceps before it. It crawled out of the Yellow-headed Blackbird’s nest on 
Fig. 2: Twenty hours old 
felt 
