Rallus longirostris obsoletus

Behold! The California Clapper Rail!

I came upon this mighty bird at Don Edwards NWR today. For me it has been the holy grail of Bay Area birding--I've only ever seen it on the refuge's welcome sign.

The Clapper Rail is divided into a number of subspecies, some of whose populations are more stable than others. The California Clapper is seriously threatened; the bulk of its population resides in the San Francisco Bay marshlands and is subject to dwindling appropriate habitat.

Rails by their nature are extremely secretive and easy to miss. The expression "thin as a rail" comes from this type of bird, which is known for being slender enough to forage through marsh reeds and other vegetation without disturbing them, making them effectively undetectable to predators cuing off of movement in the bushes. They rarely come out into the open, and when they do, it's a very brief event. They can fly (some species are thought to be migratory) but very seldom do.

Oddly this bird was already on my mind when I heard it call from the saltbrush this afternoon. I followed the sound to its source and scanned the openings in the vegetation, and somehow I spotted it just as it was turning a corner into a small slough-like passage. I visually traced the passage back to a bridge about a hundred yards back down the path. I raced over to the bridge and waited. Sure enough it appeared around a corner a few seconds later and I snapped off a few photos of it. And then it was gone again! After another 10 minutes of searching, waiting, listening, and hypothesizing on its possible trajectory, I stumbled on it again. This time I watched it for a good 10 minutes, feeding along the muddy banks of the slough. Eventually and quite suddenly it nabbed a huge frog and took off deep into the saltbrush to feast on it in the safety of the cover of the brush.

What a satisfying experience! What a terrific animal! I couldn't ask for more out of a day with the birds.