Here
and there a Florida gallinule put up its head among the leaves, or took
flight as we pressed too closely upon it; but I saw them to no
advantage, and with a single exception they were dumb. One bird, as it
dashed into the rushes, uttered two or three cries that sounded
familiar. The Florida gallinule is in general pretty silent, I think;
but he has a noisy season; then he is indeed noisy enough. A swamp
containing a single pair might be supposed to be populous with barn-yard
fowls, the fellow keeps up such a clatter: now loud and terror-stricken,
"like a hen whose head is just going to be cut off," as a friend once
expressed it; then soft and full of content, as if the aforesaid hen had
laid an egg ten minutes before, and were still felicitating herself upon
the achievement. It was vexatious that here, in the very home of Florida
gallinules, I should see and hear less of them than I had more than once
done in Massachusetts, where they are esteemed a pretty choice rarity,
and where, in spite of what I suppose must be called exceptional good
luck, my acquaintance with them had been limited to perhaps half a dozen
birds. But in affairs of this kind a direct chase is seldom the best
rewarded. At one point the boatman pulled up to a thicket of small
willows, bidding me be prepared to see birds in enormous numbers; but we
found only a small company of night herons--evidently breeding
there--and a green heron.
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