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Clapper Rail | Rallus crepitans
Klapperral | Rascón crepitante
The Clapper Rail is the large, grey-brown rail of mangroves and coastal salt marshes, with a long, slightly curved bill. It owes its name to the loud, clattering call series that roll through the mangroves at dusk and at the turn of the tide. In the Caribbean it is the mangrove rail from the Bahamas to Guadeloupe. In Cuba it is called gallinuela de manglar, in Puerto Rico pollo de mangle.
Voice
A loud, dry, clattering series kek-kek-kek-kek-kek or chak-chak-chak, first accelerating and then slowing. Several birds often call in quick succession, so that the calling spreads through the mangroves; mainly at dusk, at night and at the turn of the tide.
Recording: Scott McConnell — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
32–41 cm, with a long, slender, slightly decurved bill, brownish with an orange-yellow base to the lower mandible. The upperparts are grey-brown with dark feather centres and grey edges, giving a vaguely streaked pattern. Cheek grey, throat white, a narrow white supercilium. Neck and breast are drab grey-brown to pale brownish. Flanks and belly are grey to blackish with white bars; the undertail is white. The legs are grey-brown to dull orange. The sexes are alike; the male is slightly larger. Juveniles are darker, with fainter flank bars. It walks among the mangrove roots with the short tail cocked and seldom flies.
Confusion species
King Rail Rallus elegans, its freshwater counterpart in Cuba, is more warmly coloured, with a rusty neck and breast, brown cheeks and more contrasting upperparts. Sora Porzana carolina, a winter visitor, is much smaller, with a short yellow bill. In Trinidad the mangrove rail is not the Clapper Rail but the very similar Mangrove Rail Rallus longirostris.
Habitat
Mangroves, salt and brackish coastal marshes, tidal creeks and muddy banks, also around salt pans and lagoons fringed with mangroves. It feeds on mud and in shallow water, especially at low tide, on crabs, shrimps, molluscs, insects and small fish. The nest is a cup of plant material in the mangroves or in dense vegetation, just above the high-water line.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, in Cuba (including the Isla de la Juventud and the offshore cays), Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, in the Virgin Islands and in the Lesser Antilles to Antigua, Barbuda and Guadeloupe. There are only a few records from the Cayman Islands and Martinique. In Trinidad it is replaced by the Mangrove Rail. Beyond the region along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, from Connecticut to north-eastern Mexico, and in the north-east of the Yucatán Peninsula and Belize.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In almost any larger mangrove area within the range, at low tide on the edge of the mangroves or from a path or jetty beside a tidal creek. The call gives the birds away far more often than they are seen; after a calling bout they sometimes walk briefly over open mud.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In the Caribbean the species is under local pressure from the cutting and filling of mangroves for building and tourism, from pollution and from predation by introduced mongooses and rats. On some islands it is also hunted.
Scientific name
Rallus crepitans | Gmelin, 1789
Gmelin described the species in 1789 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Rallus was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Rallus is the name English ornithologists such as Willughby and Albin already used for the water rail before Linnaeus; the precise origin of the word is uncertain. crepitans is Latin for 'clattering, rattling', after the loud, rattling call. The specimen the first description was based on came from Long Island, New York.