VIRGINIA RAIL. Rallus virginianus Linnaeus

Field characters.—Size of Robin or Killdeer; body very narrow (compressed); bill slender, over 1-1/4 inches long; tail very short, upstanding; breast cinnamon colored, back streaked with olive brown and black. Walks with jerking movement of head and neck.

Occurrence.—Resident in small numbers in marshy situations. Noted at Smith Creek, Snelling, and Lagrange. Lives secluded, in streamside or pond-margin thickets, rarely venturing into the open.

Only the observer who can take time to search thoroughly the dense vegetation of the marshlands will be at all likely to see the Virgina Rail. Even if present plentifully, the bird is so elusive that a clear view of one is obtained only by chance. At Lagrange, on December 10, 1915, a small rail was heard and seen, and the next day a Virginia Rail was caught in a steel trap. At Snelling, on January 9, 1915, a bird of this species was caught in an oat-baited mouse trap placed in a marshy situation close to the Merced River. The stealthy, mouse-like habits of the bird are indicated by these captures, which, as far as bait was concerned, were in all probability purely accidental. The Virginia Rail's food consists almost entirely of small invertebrate animals, in search of which it slips through the narrow passageways in swamp vegetation. The mouse trap had been set in such a natural runway.

Mr. Donald D. McLean (1916, p. 229) records the finding of a nest of the Virginia Rail, at Smith Creek, east of Coulterville, on June 5, 1916. The structure was tower-like, composed of grasses from the surrounding wet meadow, and was 8 inches in diameter and about the same in height. The 10 brown-and-lilac-spotted eggs were just beginning to be incubated.

The grass clump in which the nest was situated was not disturbed when the meadow was mowed. When anyone approached the vicinity, the incubating bird would slip off quietly; sometimes she could be heard splashing through the water as she ran away. Usually she did not go more than six feet from the nest, and there would remain standing quietly, appearing merely as a dark shadow. She uttered occasionally a low clucking sound.

Nothing was seen of the male until June 18, when a shrill whistle came from him as he stood some distance away in the grass. This was answered by a similar but softer note from his mate. The male showed himself momentarily as he skulked through the grass, trying apparently to distract attention from the nest.

On June 19 there were 6 coal-black young in the nest. They had black-ringed, pink bills and their feet were large in proportion to their bodies. The female now overcame her shyness and walked out into the open within three feet of the observers. She fluffed up her feathers in the manner of a brooding hen, and uttered many clucks and whistles which were answered by the louder notes of the male.

Later the same day the nest was again visited. The female was absent, but soon appeared, after her mate had whistled, swimming and wading toward the nest across a bit of open water. By the evening of the nineteenth, another egg had hatched, and by the morning of the twentieth, 2 more; the last egg hatched that afternoon. On the morning of June 21, the family had departed. Nothing more was seen of them, save for one that showed itself for a moment one day in late July.

One bird, chiefly in the blackish juvenal plumage, was taken at the same locality, July 24, 1920.