Learning about Yellow Rails

The one and only time I've seen a Yellow Rail was several years ago with a tour group in Aitkin County. This came to mind when I learned of a study of this elusive species underway in northwestern Minnesota.

Yellow Rails are very secretive birds. They live in grassy marshes and wet sedge meadows, almost never casually seen. They migrate, so they fly up here from wintering grounds on the Gulf coast, and they fly out in the fall, but I've never even read of anyone seeing them airborne.

We located our rail by imitating its call. This is simple to do: just take two small stones or two quarters and knock them together in the rail's particular rhythm – click-click, click-click-click. Repeat and repeat again. With luck, a rail will answer. It's possible to lure them close enough to make slogging through the marsh worthwhile, from an observation viewpoint.

There were about a dozen birders in this group. We walked into the knee-deep water, and formed a large circle around the sound of the bird. We slowly tightened the circle, eventually forcing the bird into the air. It fluttered up just enough to escape the circle, then dropped back into the grass and the dark. Our guide used a flashlight to give us all a glimpse of the bird.

If you're collecting tick marks on your life list, that's enough. This was back in the days before hearing the bird was as good as seeing it. Hear a bird, and it could go on your list. This all sounds sort of silly today – the importance of seeing the bird, the effort we all made to disturb it, the fact that hearing it counted for nothing. But, then, if you watched the PGA golf championship finals Sunday, birding isn't the only pastime with strange rules.

The large marshes south of McGregor in Aitkin County, and Crex Meadows Wildlife Area just outside of Grantsburg, Wis., are two places where many birders have seen/heard their first Yellow Rail.

The study I mentioned is being done by a student named Anne Sidie as part of her work toward a Master's degree at South Dakota State University. She spent the summer working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, focusing on Yellow Rails because this is one of the species labeled of "high concern" in the North American Waterbird Conservation Plan, as well as two other similar programs.

April through July is the best time to hear/see (maybe) these birds, but Anna is talking about square miles of habitat with very limited road access. If you can find a way in, Roseau and Kittson counties have "a lot of rails," she says. The Roseau River Wildlife Management Area is a particularly good spot; permission from the manager is needed for access.

Anna and her teammates are using electronic listening devices known as autonomous recording units that capture sounds – singing rails, sharp-tailed and LeConte's sparrows among other nighttime sounds. (Click-click counts as a song.) Both sparrows also fall in the difficult-to-find-see-hear category. The recordings are examined with special software to filter out non-bird sounds.

"We hope to learn more about daily and seasonal changes in species calling, environmental factors affecting calling, and evaluate a practical approach for using these ARUs for surveys," Anna said. "We hope to learn more about how extremely important these large, expansive saturated sedge meadows are."

Anna lived at Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge during the field season. She knew of several visitors to the refuge looking for rails. They were daytime visitors, however, so most likely went home unsuccessful. Anna understands that. For all of her time in the field working with this species, she has yet to see one.