This Rail, like all its race, is a slow and heavy flyer, flapping awkwardly along with its legs hanging down and a laborious flutter of the wings. It is, of course, very easily shot, even by a bungler, and there is little or no sport in the pursuit, though its flesh is tender and delicate, so that it is pursued on that account with some eagerness.
Second to the Clapper Rail, in size, and infinitely superior to it in beauty and excellence of flesh, is the King Rail, Rallus elegans, which is by far the handsomest of the species. It is commonly known as the Fresh-Water Meadow Hen, though it is not with us to the northward a frequent or familiar visitant, the Delaware river being for the most part its northeastern limit, and very few being killed to the eastward of that boundary. A few are found, it is true, from time to time, in New Jersey, and it has occurred on Long Island, and in the southern part of New York, though rather as an exception than as a rule.
Next to these come the Virginia Rail, which is represented to the right hand of the cut at the head of this paper, and the Sora, which accompanies it.
The Virginia Rail, Rallus Virginianus, notwithstanding its nomenclature, which would seem to indicate its peculiar local habitation, is very generally found throughout the United States, and very far to the northward of the Old Dominion. I have myself killed it in the State of Maine, as well as in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, at the marsh of the Aux Canards river, in Canada East, and on the head waters of the Lake Huron Rivers. In the great wild rice marshes of the St. Clair river, the Virginia Rail, like most of the aquatic birds and waders, is very common. It is rather more upland in its habits than its companion, the Sora, which delights in the wettest tide-flowed swamps where the foot of man can scarcely tread, being frequently killed by the Snipe-shooter in wet inland meadows, which is rarely or never the case with the Sora.
The Virginia Rail is, however, not unfrequently found in company with the other on the mud flats of the Delaware, and, with it, is shot from skiffs propelled by a pole through the reed beds at high water.
The Virginia Rail is a pretty bird, measuring about eight inches in length. The bill is about an inch long, slightly decurved, red at the base and black at the extremity; the nostrils linear. The top of the head is dark-brown, with a few pale yellowish streaks; a blackish band extends from the base of the bill to the eye, and a large, ash-colored spot, commencing above the eye posteriorily, occupies the whole of the cheeks. The throat, breast, and belly, so far as to the thighs, which partake the same color, are of a rich fulvous red, deepest on the belly. The upper parts, back of the neck, scapulars, and rump, are dark blackish-brown, irregularly streaked and dashed with pale yellowish-olive. The wing-coverts are bright bay, the quills and tail blackish-brown. The vent black, every feather margined with white. The legs are red, naked a little way up the tibia. It is a very rapid runner, but flies heavily. It affords a succulent and highly flavored dish, and is accordingly very highly prized, though scarcely equal in this respect to its congener, the Sora, which is regarded by many persons as the most delicious of all game, though for my own part I would postpone it to the Canvas-Back, Fuligula valisneria, the Upland Plover, Totanus Bartramius, and the Pinnated Grouse, or Prairie Fowl, Tetrao cupido.
The Sora Rail, Rallus Carolinus, which is more especially the subject of this paper, is somewhat inferior in size to the last species, and is easily distinguished from it by the small, round head, and short bill, in which it differs from all the rest of its family. This bill is scarcely half an inch in length, unusually broad at the base, and tapering regularly to a bluntly rounded point. At the base and through nearly the whole length of the lower mandible it is pale greenish-yellow, horn-colored at the tip. The crown of the head, nape, and shoulders, are of a uniform pale olive-brown, with a medial black stripe on the crown. The cheeks, throat, and breast, pale rufous brown, fading into rufous white on the belly, which is mottled with broad transverse gray lines. The back, scapulars, wing-coverts, and rump, are olive-brown, broadly patched with black, and having many of the feathers margined longitudinally with white, the quills dark blackish-brown, the tail dark reddish-brown. The lower parts from the tail posteriorily to the vent transversely banded with black and white. The legs long and slender, bare a short way up the tibia, of a pale greenish hue. The iris of the eye is bright chestnut. The male bird has several black spots on the neck.
This bird is migratory in the United States, passing along the sea-coast as well as in the interior; a few breed in New Jersey, on the Raritan, Passaic, and Hackensack rivers; but on the Delaware and its tributaries, which abound with wild rice, it is exceedingly abundant, as it is also in the great northwestern lakes and rivers which are all plentifully supplied with this its favorite food. It is rarely killed in New York or to the eastward, though a few are found on the flats of the Hudson. It winters for the most part to the south of the United States, although a few pass the cold season in the tepid swamps and morasses of Florida and Louisiana. All this is now ascertained beyond doubt, but till within a few years all sorts of strange fabulous tales have been in circulation concerning the habits of this bird; arising from the circumstance of its very sudden and mysterious arrival and disappearance on its breeding-grounds, the marshes being one day literally alive with them, and the next solitary and deserted. Add to this its difficult, short, and laborious flight, apparently so inadequate to the performance of migrations thousands of miles in length, and it will be easy to conceive that the vulgar, the ignorant, and the prejudiced, should have been unable to comprehend the possibility of its aërial voyages, and should have endeavored to account for their disappearance by insisting that they burrow into the mud and become torpid during the winter, as I have myself heard men maintain, incredulous and obstinate against conviction. Audubon has thought it necessary gravely, and at some length, to controvert this absurd fallacy, and in doing so has recorded the existence of a planter on the James River, in Virginia, who is well convinced that the Sora changes in the autumn into a frog, and resumes its wings and plumage in the spring, thus renewing the absurd old legend of Gerardus Cambrensis in relation to the tree which bears shell-fish called barnacles, whence in due season issue barnacle geese.
The Sora Rail arrives in the Northern States in April or May. I saw one killed myself this spring in a deep tide marsh on the Salem creek, near Pennsville, in New Jersey, on the 25th of the former month, which was in pretty good condition. They migrate so far north as to Hudson’s Bay, where they arrive early in June, and depart again for the south early in the autumn. They breed in May and June, making an inartificial nest of dry grass, usually in a tussock in the marsh, and laying four or five eggs of dirty white, with brown or blackish-white spots. The young run as soon as they are hatched, and skulk about in the grass like young mice, being covered with black down. The Sora Rail is liable to a curious sort of epileptic fit, into which it appears to fall in consequence of the paroxysms of fear or rage to which it is singularly liable.
The following account of the habits and the method of shooting this bird, from Wilson’s great work on the Birds of America, is so admirably graphic, truthful, and life-like, that I prefer transcribing it for my own work on Field Sports, into which I copied it entire as incomparably superior to any thing I have elsewhere met on the subject, to recording it myself with, perhaps, inferior vigor.