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Clapper Rail | Rallus crepitans
Klapperral | Rascón crepitante
Clapper Rail is the large grey-brown rail of mangroves and coastal salt marshes, with a long, slightly decurved 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 guide area it lives along the coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula and Belize and locally on the Gulf coast of Mexico; on the Pacific coast it is replaced by related species.
Voice
A loud, dry, clattering series kek-kek-kek-kek-kek or chak-chak-chak, first accelerating and then slowing. Often several birds call in quick succession, so that the call travels 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 faintly streaked pattern. Cheek grey, throat white, a narrow white supercilium. Neck and breast are dull 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. Young birds are darker, with less distinct flank bars. Walks among the mangrove roots with its short tail cocked and rarely flies.
Confusion species
King Rail Rallus elegans, its freshwater counterpart, is more warmly coloured, with a rufous neck and breast, brown cheeks and more sharply contrasting upperparts; in the guide area it is rare and known only from Veracruz. Ridgway's Rail Rallus obsoletus in north-western Mexico and Mangrove Rail Rallus longirostris on the Pacific coast from El Salvador to Costa Rica closely resemble Clapper Rail but do not occur alongside it. Rufous-necked Wood Rail Aramides axillaris, also a mangrove bird, is bulkier, with a rufous head and neck and red legs. Virginia Rail Rallus limicola is much smaller, with a reddish bill.
Habitat
Mangroves, salt and brackish coastal marshes, tidal creeks and mudflat edges, also around salt pans and lagoons fringed with mangroves and on vegetated cays. Forages on mud and in shallow water, mainly 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 units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Resident along the north and east coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula, from Celestún and the coast of Campeche via Progreso and Río Lagartos to Holbox and the coast of Quintana Roo, and along the coast and on the cays of Belize, including Caye Caulker. South to the mangroves of the Caribbean coast of Guatemala near Livingston. Also locally on the Gulf coast of Tamaulipas in north-eastern Mexico; from Veracruz there are only a few reports. Outside the guide area along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, from Connecticut to Texas, and in the Caribbean from the Bahamas to Guadeloupe.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
On Caye Caulker in Belize the birds regularly walk on open ground along the mangroves and the roads near the airstrip. On the Yucatán Peninsula, for example, at Celestún and Río Lagartos, at low tide along the edge of the mangroves or from a jetty beside a tidal creek. The call gives the birds away far more often than they are seen.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In the guide area the species is locally under pressure from the clearing and filling of mangroves for building and tourism, especially along the coast of Quintana Roo and in Belize, and from pollution.
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.