I know, I know - last week I said I would write a diary about egrets. However my fingers decided to type something different. I hope I haven't abused my privilege of guest hosting and that nobody is too disappointed.
All my life I have been attracted to oddballs and characters; cheering on the sidekicks and comic relief rather than the heroes. So today I'm taking advantage of my privilege of guest hosting Dawn Chorus to champion some of the more secretive and eccentric of our avian friends. Birds with bright plumage or bold behavior get most of the press so I'm going to put in a few words for a group of birds that mostly lurk in the shadows: the rails.
Rails may not be the obvious or glamorous birds in the world but they have mystery and character. They live in swamps and marshes, dense forests and misty grasslands, even on the most remote islands of the world. They can hide in plain sight and have the voices of lunatics. Conversely many of them are clown like and comical. Although I have not seen that many of them, rails have captured my imagination. They evoke the sense of exotic mystery that the natural world had so strongly when I was a child, the sense that all these wonderful secrets were lurking just out of sight.
Hometown Rails - North America is home to nine rail species - I've only seen five of them. Here they are, one by one (or two by two). Many of the rails are declining due to loss of wetland habitat.
American Coot.
The rail that thinks it's duck, swimming and diving in the open rather than hiding in the reeds. If you've only seen one rail, it's probably the coot. Coots don't get any respect. They have a silly name, have 'crazy feet' (to quote our esteemed host), and constantly mutter to themselves while squabbling with their neighbors.
Actually coots are pretty darn interesting. They are an excellent example of convergent evolution, having evolved to have a body form and lifestyle similar to ducks. And their crazy lobed feet are their version of the webbed feet of other waterfowl. A different solution to the same problem.
Common Moorhen.
Moorhen with bonus turtle
The coots' shy cousin with the bright red and yellow beak. Smaller than a coot and and more nervous, the moorhen is often lurking around the edges while the coot is swimming in the middle. I swear their calls are the basis of the opening 'Wipeout' cackle in the surf-rock classic by the Surfaris. You can listen to the song here and the Moorhen call here - you need to get to the second round of calling to get the full effect.
Purple Gallinule.
Nothing captures the railesque mixture of comedy, mystery, and garish beauty better than the Purple Gallinule. A tropical creature that visits the southeast in the summer this is a bird with iridescent colors and absurdly enormous feet that allow it to walk on top of aquatic vegetation.
The other six species are more 'typical' rails. They live in marshes and mostly walk rather than swim or fly. Almost never will they come into the open.
Sora.
Despite the poor quality of the above picture, this is by far the most easily seen of the six 'typical' rails. Soras are fairly common and by rail standards incredibly bold. One of the first Soras I ever saw was under a hedge next to a building on the south side of Chicago. In Britain short-billed rails such as the Sora are known as Crakes.
Clapper Rail.
A larger rail of coastal marshes. When I first saw a Clapper it seemed like a cross between a Sandpiper and a Kiwi. Watching this bird appear suddenly out of the misty reeds and stalk silently back into the marsh early on a January morning on South Padre Island cemented my love for rails.
The other North American rails remain personally hypothetical. The King Rail is a larger and more colorful version of the Clapper Rail and is found in freshwater marshes. The Virginia Rail is miniature version of the King Rail.
The last two, the Black Rail and the Yellow Rail are among the most sought after species of North American birds. Small to tiny birds that are mostly experienced, even by those who spent a lot of time looking for them, as sounds in the grass. If you've been lucky enough to see one of these, please tell us about it.
International Rails.
Surprisingly for birds that are reluctant to fly, and ungainly when they do, rails are among the most widespread of bird families. There are forest rails in the Amazon and other tropical areas of the world. Rails are also among the most successful island colonizers in the world. Remote oceanic islands all over the world have/had endemic species of rail - Hawai'i, Guam, New Caledonia, the Galapagos, Aldabra, etc.
Many of these island species have lost the ability to fly. This may seem odd but there is little evolutionary advantage in investing energy in developing wings and flight muscles if you permanently live on a tiny island with no predators. Many of them have cool names like Inaccessible Island Rail (world's smallest flightless bird - true fact), Invisible Rail (Wikipedia has no pictures so maybe it really is....), and Snoring Rail.
Unfortunately island species are highly vulnerable to introduced predators and a very large number of rails have either gone extinct or become highly endangered in the last few centuries. A number of Pacific species went extinct prior to European arrival, presumably exterminated by the Polynesians or the rats and pigs they introduced to the islands. European exploration accelerated species loss and extinctions have continued to the present, with the Guam Rail being exterminated in the wild by the introduced Brown Tree Snake in the 1980s.
Takahe
The world's largest rail, the Takahe is about the same body mass as a large goose, although somewhat differently proportioned. A flightless grazing bird from New Zealand It was thought to have gone extinct in the 1800s. However in the 1930s it was discovered in a remote mountain area on the South Island. It has since been introduced onto several offshore islands. This picture was taken in a wildlife park.
Weka
The Weka is another flightless New Zealand rail. It is also primarily found in predator free areas as it is both incapable of flight and not particularly wary. Two individuals approached us as we sheltered from the rain on Stewart Island. Pretty impressive when you consider that 'us' included a group of schoolchildren on a field trip.
Fortunately not all rails are endangered. This white-breasted water hen thrives in urban Singapore
The Purple Swamphen is among the widest ranging rails, occurring through much of the old world. In contrast to most other rails, they are bold inquisitive birds (at least they are in Australia and New Zealand) and are able to live successfully in close association with humans. They are closely related to the Takahe.
In New Zealand the purple swamphen is known as the Pukeko and it is somewhat of a national icon. Pukekos are the stars of a very clever advertising campaign. I've embedded one example below. A second one can be found here.