Black Rail tale

Rails are always a treat to come across, and some of them are the most elusive species of birds in our area. It doesn't help that they occur in wetlands that are difficult to access, or at least see through. You've probably heard the expression 'thin as a rail', which refers to the fact that you can be staring through some of the dense cattail vegetation and all of a sudden a rail partially appears, and then just as suddenly, it is gone again, and you didn't even see the vegetation move. The birds aren't really thin, just really adept at getting through sometimes really dense vegetation.

 On occasion if you get a good vantage point and are very quiet, a rail might come out and spend a fair bit of time in the open, like this Sora did for me one time. It helps that it is probably the most common of all the rail species.

Probably less common, but still fairly widespread and abundant, is the Virginia Rail. Like all rail species, they are a lot easier to hear than to see. I think I've only photographed them on one or two occasions in more than 40 years but hear them regularly when I am in their habitat at the right time of year.

The rarest rail species that nests in Ontario is the King Rail, which is officially Endangered and protected by both provincial and federal legislation. It was never common, but restricted to some of the largest and best quality wetlands of southwestern Ontario. Nowadays, it is extremely rare, with probably fewer than a dozen or so pairs in the entire province. It is a difficult species to survey for, so we don't really know. It initially looks like a much larger version of the Virginia Rail. Even some of its calls are somewhat similar, although the King Rail is noticeably deeper and throatier.

 While the King Rail is occasionally heard in some of the larger marshes, actual breeding records are few and far between. Once in awhile one may spot a family of King Rails wandering along a dyke of a large marsh. But finding a nest is even less likely. I photographed this nest at McGeachy Pond Conservation Area, near Erieau.

The water levels there were not as controlled as they are now, and the habitat was better for King Rail. A photographer friend and I came across this nest and got some photos. This was back in about 1978, and as far as I know, that is the last time an actual nest was recorded in Ontario.

Yellow Rail is the smallest, regularly occurring rail species in Ontario. While historically they nested in some wet grassy areas in southern Ontario, if they do so now, observers are keeping quiet about it. The only place where they nest with any regularity is in the wet grassy areas of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, which are next to impossible to get to for the average birder. I was fortunate to have spent a couple of weeks in those areas on two successive years, conducting wildlife surveys in the very early 1990s. While I did not actually see a Yellow Rail, I did hear them on a couple of occasions.

Which brings us to the rarest and smallest rail in Ontario, the Black Rail. In my most recent issue of Birding magazine, which I get as a member of the American Birding Association, there was an excellent article on getting a youth nature club in Louisiana involved in trying to capture Black and Yellow Rails. It was supposed to be a special event to get young birders to see some of the rarest denizens of the grassy marshes, all the while helping out with the bird banding process. The article was quite intriguing, and reminded me of a very special time when I was able to hear, although not see, a Black Rail in Ontario.

It was during my years as the park naturalist at Rondeau Provincial Park. I spent a lot of my spare time roaming around the various habitats looking for things of interest, whether it be birds, plants, reptiles, amphibians or whatever. The Rondeau marsh was one of my favourite places at any time of the day, but particularly in the early morning or early evening hours when wildlife was more likely to be active.

The fluctuating water levels of Lake Erie, and therefore the adjacent Rondeau Bay and marsh, made a difference in what vegetation was dominant. For a few years in the early to mid 1980s, it was a time when Wild Rice, an annual species which depended on declining water levels and exposed mud flats later in the summer to grow well, was quite abundant. And it was in these extensive stands of Wild Rice where Soras could be quite abundant. I remember on more than one occasion taking a few small stones with me as I walked the marsh trail. Every once in awhile I would toss a stone into the stand of Wild Rice, and instantly there would be a chorus of Soras peeping. Over the course of my walk, I estimated on one evening that there must have been over 100 birds that responded.

Dense stand of Wild Rice along the Marsh Trail

It was the evening of August 17, 1985. I had walked the marsh trail and took the side trail over to Long Pond. The wild rice was not as thick there, but still fairly plentiful, and the water was quite shallow. All of a sudden the quiet evening was broken with "kik--ee--do, kik--ee", the distinct call of a Black Rail! That is all I heard, but the call of a Black Rail is one of the most distinctive bird calls there is, especially of any wetland species. You can listen to it here. I knew instantly what it was. Although I had never heard one in real life before, I had listened to recordings since I had been involved with a marsh monitoring program as well as been a regional coordinator for the Breeding Bird Atlas, where these recordings were available.

At this point, Black Rail had not officially been added to the Ontario Bird list. There had been reports, but none had met the criteria of any committee accepting records. The criteria were fairly stringent, as they should be. To accept a new species for the provincial list, the record should be well documented independently by at least two people, or there should be a specimen or a distinctive recording. The more evidence, the better. So although I knew that is what I heard, I was reluctant to report it since I knew it did not meet the criteria for acceptance.

Open water and Wild Rice along Long Pond trail

Eventually I did submit the record, thinking that even though it did not meet the criteria, at least the record would be in the books besides just my field notes and local records. After the bird records committee reviewed all of the submitted records, they reported on the outcome. Not surprisingly, my record was not accepted unanimously. It was a split vote. But at that time, people who submitted records usually got a summary of comments by committee members that decided the vote. While I was not surprised that my record was not accepted, I was both frustrated and amused at some of the comments. One of the most amusing, and in a sense outrageous, comments was "perhaps someone was playing a recording." I found this comment ridiculous for several reasons:
-I reported that the bird was about 40-50 metres away in a stand of Wild Rice. If someone was going to play a tape recording to attract rails, why would they leave the perfectly good trail to tromp and slosh through the Wild Rice a short distance away? Such noisy action would surely scatter any wildlife.
-the Wild Rice was not super dense, but growing on mud. If there was someone out there, they would have been easily seen at that distance;
-if someone was going to try calling for rails with a recorder, why would they be doing it in mid August, at a time when rails seldom call since it is after the breeding season? Calling in late May or in June would make sense, but mid August?
-if someone was going to try calling for rails, why would they play a call that only made the call once?

Nevertheless, such a comment by a committee member added to the debate about accepting the record or not.

Please note that the purpose of this part of the post is not to bash the bird records committee. Their job is to be skeptical, consider only the facts and weigh the information they have to deal with against the criteria that the committee has to work with. And they are human just like anyone else, so a committee will usually outweigh bias or a lack of reason in reviewing the many reports that are submitted. The members of the committee are absolutely some of the most knowledgeable and careful birders in Ontario. They should be congratulated for doing a job that requires a lot of knowledge and skill in analysis.

In retrospect, I could have included information that would explain the conditions and site specific circumstances so that this committee member's comments would not have been made. And I certainly recognize that by hearing the bird call only once, as distinctive as the call is, it was not enough evidence for officially adding the species to the Ontario list.

As much as anything, the purpose of this post is:
-to recognize that the committee members have an enormous task. Of course in this digital day and age, it is easier to get high quality photos and/or recordings of birds than there was back in the 1980s when most reports were only written submissions. But even at that, some photos just aren't clear enough (if only birds were considerate enough to be in those perfect lighting conditions.....), and certainly the written evidence is not always adequate to be 100% convincing;
-to encourage birders to make sure when they are submitting a report, to ensure that as much realistic detail as possible is included. The committee can only review what they are given;
 -to recognize that not all records submitted will be accepted, for various reasons. I expect that anyone who has submitted records, may have had some rejected. That is frustrating, to be sure, and in many cases it isn't because the bird was incorrectly identified, but the level of detail submitted may not have been sufficient for the committee to accept it. And let's face it, on occasion we may see a bird well enough that we are convinced of its identification, but because the observation was fleeting or some critical features were not noted, we can't include information that we didn't see or hear, and therefore the report just doesn't have enough convincing evidence. That is life, and that certainly is birding!
-it just so happens that today, April 7, the current committee met to consider the reports submitted over the course of this past year.

So next time you see one of the committee members, give them a thank-you for a task that isn't always easy.