Porzana carolina
Order Gruiformes
Family Rallidae
Other names: Carolina Rail
Adult.— Top of head brown, a blackish stripe through the centre; back, wings, and tail brown, streaked with black and a little white; sides of head, line over eye, and breast ash-gray; forehead, region about the base of the bill, middle of throat, and breast black; belly white; bill short, yellow.
Immature.— Upper parts dark brown, mixed on the back with black and a little white; throat white; breast washed with buff; sides dark, barred with white; belly white.
Nest, a platform of grass or sedge in a tuft of grass or sedge.
Eggs, brownish-buff, sparsely spotted with brown and purplish-gray.
The Carolina Rail is a common summer resident of most of New York and New England, though rather rare in the vicinity of New York city. It arrives in April, and leaves in October. Though common in suitable localities, it is only found where there are extensive marshes, cat-tail swamps, or meadows which retain much water all through the summer. Here it may be constantly heard and occasionally seen, picking its way along the edge of the marsh or between the tussocks of sedge, or, when startled, flying a short distance with weak flight and dangling legs, and then dropping into the grass. It walks with a constant upright tilt of its short tail, thus exposing the buffy under tail-coverts.
The notes of the Carolina Rail, heard most commonly at the approach of dusk and all through the evening, and also at intervals through the day, are a long frog-like cry, resembling the syllable kur-wee’, and a whinny. The birds utter also, when startled, a cry like the syllable kuk; a stone thrown into the cat-tails in late summer or fall is almost sure to provoke this cry. Its short yellow bill shows conspicuously against the black about its base, and distinguishes it from the Virginia Rail, which has a long dark bill.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)