File:Birds and nature in natural colors - being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada (1913) (14775142683).jpg

Identifier: birdsnatureinnat02chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds -- North America
Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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usual haunts of the Sora, I have heard sundry keks half apprehensive, halfquizzical, followed by the splashing of light feet as a troop of the little Railsworked their way out and surrounded me, under pretense, indeed, of searchingfor food, but being all too plainly prompted by inquisitiveness. Dr. Howard Jonestells of similar experiences: I have had them come up to me and peck my gumboots, and play wnth the gun barrel as a bantam rooster does when teased. A slight platform of rushes or a shallow basket of Avoven cat-tail leavesand grasses serves for a nest. A site is chosen anywhere in the swamp, butusually in a rather open situation. Sometimes a tussock of grass is used, andthe growing blades curl over to conceal this anchored ark of bulrushes. TheSora is a little more prolific than her cousin the Virginia, a dozen eggs beingcommonly found and fourteen and fifteen not infrequently. In the latter casethe eggs are apt to be in two layers. The ochraceous cast of the ground color is 300
Text Appearing After Image:
unmistakable, and the spots are both more numerous and of a duller brownthan those of R. virginianus. Nothing could be at once more interesting and more comical than theappearance of a young Sora just out of the shell. He is, to begin with, a ballof 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 anair of defiance, and you have a very clown. And such precocity! I once cameupon a nestful in a secluded spot at the critical time. Hearing my distant foot-steps, most of the brood had taken to their new-found heels, leaving two lucklesswights in ovo. At my approach one more prison door flew open. The absurdfluff-ball rolled out, shook itself, grasped the situation, promptly tumbled overthe side of the nest, and started to swim across a six-foot pool to safety. Speaking of the protuberance at the base of the upper mandible, one cannothelp wondering whether this is not a reminiscence (i

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