King Rail | Rallus elegans

Voice

A series of loud, even grunting notes, kek-kek-kek-kek or jup-jup-jup, lower and slower than in Clapper Rail and accelerating less. Also short grunting and clicking calls, mainly at dusk and at night.

Identification

38–48 cm; the male is larger than the female. The bill is long, slightly decurved and brownish with an orange-yellow base to the lower mandible. The upperparts are brown with blackish feather centres and rufous edges, giving a clearly streaked pattern. Cheek grey-brown, throat white, a narrow pale supercilium. Neck and breast are warm cinnamon to rufous. Flanks and belly are black with sharp white bars; the undertail is white. The legs are grey-brown to orangey. Young birds are darker and less clearly marked. Walks cautiously through dense vegetation and rarely flies, with dangling legs.

Confusion species

Clapper Rail Rallus crepitans is on average smaller and greyer, with grey cheeks, a dull breast and less contrasting upperparts, and lives almost only in mangroves and salt marshes. Where both meet in brackish marshes, intermediates may occur. Aztec Rail Rallus tenuirostris of the marshes of the central plateau closely resembles King Rail but has a thinner bill and lives inland. Virginia Rail Rallus limicola has a similar colour pattern but is much smaller, with a grey cheek and a reddish bill.

Habitat

Freshwater and slightly brackish marshes with cattail, sedge, reed and bulrush, flooded grassland and the edges of lagoons and river deltas in the lowlands; elsewhere in its range also rice fields. Forages in shallow water and at the edge of the vegetation on crustaceans, aquatic insects, small fish, frogs and seeds. The nest is a cup of plant material hidden in dense vegetation above the water.

Range and movements

In the guide area only scarce and local in the coastal marshes of Veracruz, mainly around Tecolutla and in the Alvarado wetlands and the lower Papaloapan; there are records from various months of the year. Whether this is a settled breeding population or partly winter visitors from the north is not well known. Reports from the interior of Mexico are hard to separate from Aztec Rail. Outside the guide area in the eastern United States, from the Great Lakes to Florida and the Gulf coast, and on Cuba; the northern birds move south in winter.

• Resident
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

In the guide area the species is seldom seen. The best chance is in the marshes at Tecolutla and Alvarado in Veracruz, in the early morning or evening, along dykes and roads where dense marsh vegetation meets open water. A calling bird sometimes answers a second bird and then briefly shows itself at the edge of the vegetation.

Conservation status

Near Threatened. The species has declined steeply in North America through the loss of freshwater marshes. In the guide area the population is small and poorly known; the coastal marshes of Veracruz are under pressure from drainage, conversion to pasture and pollution.

Scientific name

Rallus elegans | Audubon, 1834

Audubon described the species in 1834 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. elegans is Latin for 'elegant, fine', after the richly coloured plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Charleston, South Carolina.