_Rallus longirostris._—+Lath.+
Pl. enl. 849.
[113] Length 15¹⁄₄ inches, expanse 20¹⁄₂, flexure 5¹⁄₄, tail 2⁴⁄₁₀,
rictus 2⁶⁄₁₀, tarsus 2⁴⁄₁₀, middle toe 2³⁄₁₀. Irides hazel.
The reader shall be introduced to the bird before us, by the delightful
pen of my friend, Mr. Hill.
“14th of March, 1842. I have visited Passage Fort at a season when
Wild-ducks are stretching from one side of the Bay to the other in
strings, and Plovers and Sandpipers are feeding in little flocks on
the beach. The nights and the mornings are quiet, but the day is one
uninterrupted bluster of the sea-breeze. The country is dry. Many of
the large trees are leafless, and there is no verdure in the grass.
Such a picture would seem to afford no great diversity for amusement:
the sea, however, is always an interesting object. Whether calm or
stirring it has a variety of features, all different at different hours
of the day. The repose of morning; the slumbering ocean; the sleepy
mountains kerchiefed in clouds; the awakened daylight peeping through
the curtains of night; the birds just risen and moving; the little
flocks wending about as if the day had its business to attend to; the
Herons and Egrets shaking their wings by the mirrory waters, and making
their toilet there. All this is a pleasant mixture of repose and
activity; of the stir from sleeping to waking; in which nature is never
seen to such advantage, as in the magnitude of a view that mingles the
ocean with the earth.
“The day is gathering brighter and brighter; but the mountains rise
between me and the sun, and are one dull blue mass, neither deeply nor
faintly blue, but clear, and yet obscure. On the beach the fishermen
are silently hauling their seine, sweeping, with its line of dotted
corks, such a circuit on the waters, that it seems to take in half
the bay. At a distance off, the flats loaded with grass are getting
under weigh. Busy men and women are on the beach launching canoes and
preparing for the market. The sails are hoisted, and the masses, that
lay like logs upon the water, just stir, and glide out into the glaring
bay. Amid all this hushed movement, there is one pervading sound,
the murmurs of the distant breakers. This voice is seldom silent;
in the stillest lull there will be heard this roll of the restless
surge.——There is a sweet melancholy voice that comes from the bordering
mangroves along the river: it is the morning call of the Pea-dove.
It is responded to by a faint low cooing from the hill-side woods.
It is repeated again and again; and again it is replied to far away.
And now there are other sounds. The Crotophagas are trooping to the
river-shallows, and calling to each other to settle among the sedges,
where the receding tide has left them living food. There is a sound
overhead like the hurtling of arrows. It is a flock of Wild-ducks
flitting from the Salt Island ponds to the Lagoons on the other side
the bay: and again there is another sound of gathered tribes moving
through the air. It resembles bubbling waters. It is a flight of
Tinklings shifting from their rookery to their feeding grounds in the
morasses. Streams of smoke are curling up from various points of the
mountains, like the morning sacrifices of hill-worshippers of old.
A shower has scudded along the loftiest of the ridges and shown the
deep indentings of the elevated country, by the different depths of
the misty haze.—It has passed away, and the heights are now lighted
by the full blaze of the uprisen sun. The clouds cast deep shadows on
the mountain declivities, and the highest points of the chain pierce
through the masses, rolling one upon the other, thick and accumulated.
“The sea-breeze is in. It comes as no other breeze comes, and feels as
no other breeze feels. At first two or three whiffles make darkened
tracks on the glassy waters. Then half the sea afar off is covered with
ripples. The ripples come creeping on, and the wind has reached the
shore. Two minutes pass, and a line of small breakers are chasing each
other on the beach. From this time the constant wind never lulls, but
sweeps with ‘a steady unrelenting force from the bright east.’
“Noon. In a small stretch of marsh land, through which the river has
cut two or three channels, and left several smaller meandering dykes
very clear and open, with pools and little lakes shut in from the
sea by sand-banks, there is a good deal of rank grass (_Digitaria
stolonifera_) growing, on which the village goats congregate to feed
at mid-day, that being the time when the ground is least swampy. Among
the sedge and bulrushes that cover the flooded parts, at the same
noon-tide hours, the _crek, crek, crek_, of the Water-rail is heard,
with that kind of impatient reiterated sound, with which Guinea-fowl
call to each other. This call is a summons for the birds to quit the
sedges, and seek the muddy shoals and half-dry ooze, to feed. Two or
three birds nearly, if not quite, as large as half grown pullets, of a
dingy ash-colour, come over a low intervening wall where I am, and feed
in the open yard. The country people call this bird the Mangrove-hen,
from its appearance, its habits, and its haunts. It greatly resembles
the dappled grey variety of the common fowl; and in the breeding season
it rambles about with its callow brood, like a hen and chickens. After
one of these visits, I went and traced the footmarks in the mud, and
found that the Mangrove-hens had been searching for small crabs.
Worms, shell-fish, insects, and crustacea are its animal food, and the
seeds and shoots of aquatic plants, its vegetable. As the rank-growing
herbage is necessary for its concealment, and creative wisdom has
adapted it, like the rest of its tribe, by an extraordinary expansion
of the foot, for walking on weedy waters, and so compressed its body
that it threads with alacrity reeds and rushes; the mangrove thickets,
which it commonly haunts, are those that grow in tide-waters, and
at the mouths of rivers, and in neighbourhoods luxuriant in aquatic
herbage. These are the prevailing thickets at Passage Fort: I therefore
find every body there familiar with the Mangrove-hen. As these birds
have much of the character of the _gallinaceæ_, and are able to run
and feed themselves as soon as they are hatched, they are, when half
grown, as helpless on the wing as half-fledged poultry. At the pullet
age, when feeding out on the mud and shoals, they are run down with
great facility. At this time they are delicious eating. Persons, on
whose taste I can depend, tell me, that, though a Plover be undoubtedly
a fine bird for the table, and the Sanderling a great delicacy, the
Mangrove-hen exceeds both; as it combines all their peculiarity
of flavour with the fleshiness of the Quail. This is no small
commendation.”
To this interesting note, I have little to add. At Crabpond, where
rounded clumps of mangroves are scattered like islets in a lake, we
have observed it frequently running quickly and timidly from one cover
to another, exposing itself in the open pond as little as possible. As
it walks under the arched roots, it holds its short tail nearly erect.
In a specimen dissected in December, I found fragments of crabs; and
a large one, nearly whole, was in the craw: the stomach is a muscular
gizzard. This individual was excessively fat.
One brought to me alive in May, taken in a springe, bit fiercely and
pertinaciously at anything presented to it, shaking it like a dog. It
uttered in rapid succession the most deafening screams.
The long beak, and the spurs upon the winglet, distinguish this species
from our other Rails.