RAIL TRAILS (8/18/00)

Cape Cod’s rail trails are well-known to bicyclists, roller bladers and walkers. There are other rail trails, however, followed only by dedicated birdwatchers. In the past year, I have covered many of these routes, which, in truth, really means being on the trail of rails.

Confusing? Not if you know what a rail is in a birder’s world. Rails are solitary and secretive birds that live, for the most part, in marshes where there are thick grasses. All have short tails and rounded wings, should you ever be so fortunate as to see one fly. Closely related but less reticent are coots and gallinules, with which you might be familiar. Rails are far more often heard than seen; in fact, often the only way to identify a species is by its call.

Although all rails can swim, only a few have any sort of webbing between their toes and none as extensive as ducks’. Their bills vary from long and thin for probing in muddy ooze to short and stout for tearing vegetation. Rails of all species walk with strong, precise strides, much like domestic chickens to which they are closely related. There are approximately 120 species of rails in the world.

In our own backyard, meaning Cape Cod, there are perhaps three that a serious birder might locate in the course of a year: Virginia rail, clapper rail and king rail. The first is fairly reliable if you know precisely which marsh has a breeding pair, but the other two demand considerable work and a lot of luck. One approach is to take a canoe through a marsh early in the morning while listening for a rail to call. Another is to walk one of the great marshes on the Cape’s north side, but that type of outing is fraught with all sorts of dangers and not one I really recommend.

The third way to see a rail is to join a group from the Cape Cod Bird Club at Fort Hill, Eastham, in September and October on the days when there are extra high tides. These tides often force rails out into the open along the shoreline.

But what about rails elsewhere in the world? The first rail trail I ever visited, and by the far the easiest to cover, was on my honeymoon in South Texas (really!) Called the Rail Road (by birders) on West Galveston Island, it allowed us to get great views of king, clapper and Virginia rails as they strode along in nothing grander than a roadside ditch. With our field guide in hand, we studied and argued which species was which until we felt we had pegged each bird correctly.

Since then, we’ve pursued rails in other parts of the U.S., Mexico, China, Spain, Egypt, South Africa and most countries in South America. Our two most recent and most exhilarating ventures were in South Africa and Venezuela. In South Africa we had a guide for just the two of us, as keen on rails as we (well, truthfully, as husband Stauffer). I enjoy seeing rails, but I do not run around in foot-deep water and tall grass in an effort to scare one out. I prefer to see my rails out the window of a car.

Back to S. Africa where the African (Kaffir) rail, Baillon’s crake and several flufftails (all rails but in different categories) were our target birds. We heard a lot more than we saw, but we did meet success with most. The buff-spotted flufftail.was certainly the most interesting, since it is not always found in a marsh. The one we saw was actually in our Bed and Breakfast garden feeding under a very dense bush. We had to crawl on our hands and knees, then stay motionless for ten minutes before we could glimpse this tiny rail working around in its secret world. The B & B owners had heard its strange cry and thought it was a mammal!

We recently returned from the northwest part of Venezuela, where only the two of us were on the trail of the gray-necked woodrail and the rusty-flanked crake. We found the latter in two different marshes. At the second spot, we couldn’t believe our eyes when we realized that a family of these “secretive” birds was running around in the open! As is so often said, “truth is stranger than fiction.” We saw a group of the woodrail very early in the morning when they were out of their marsh and walking and calling on the highway.

So, the next time you walk, glide or bike on a paved rail trail, think of the other type that lures birders to some really far-out places!