Hi all,

I headed down to Circleville this afternoon, arriving at the Black Rail
locale near Charlie's Pond around 4:15. There, I met Ken Beers, who had also
just arrived. Within five minutes, we heard a Black Rail vocalizing, clear
as a bell and loud as could be. With no prompting, the bird called fairly
often for quite some time and just couldn't be missed. Then, in a stupendous
fit of serendipity, the bird fluttered weakly across the road right before
our eyes! Those who know how hard this species is to actually see will
appreciate that bit of luck. We are reasonably certain that we heard another
as well, but this species can be rather ventroliqual, but when I was hearing
the bird on the north side of the road calling from only feet away, Ken, who
was stationed some distance down the road, heard another on the opposite
side.

The classic Kick-ee-drrr song is that of the male, and that's what we mostly
heard. But several times and at close range, we also heard the rapid
cuckoo-like coos that are attributed to female Black Rails. The plot
thickens.

All the blather about taping and I-podding aside, there should be no reason
to do that in this case. The rail(s) are quite vocal and can be easily heard
with no prompting. One interesting thing was how the Ring-necked Pheasants
would set them off. There are a lot of pheasants in the area, and one of the
roosters was periodically crowing close at hand, followed by the loud burst
of wing-flapping that displaying males engage in. Ninety percent of the time
the pheasant crowed/flapped, one of the Black Rails would call soon after.
Must be something about the frequency of the sound, but whatever the case,
the pheasants made wonderful I-pods and certainly stimulated a rail to sing.

There are some interesting questions about the presence of a highly
territorial, heavily vocalizing Black Rail (rails?) in early June in what
was once perhaps the finest wet prairie ecosystem in Ohio. Only 100-150 or
so years ago, the Pickaway Plains, of which Charlie's Pond and some smidgens
of associated habitat remain about the only surving pieces, would have been
a radically different place. Charlie's Pond would have been but one of an
abundance of wet prairie sloughs surrounded by seas of prairie grass. It
wouldn't be a stretch to speculate that Black Rails may have historically
nested in this region. In the last decade, we've seen a return of some
former prairie breeders like Wilson's Phalarope to former Ohio prairie sites
where large wetland restoration projects have been done. It may be no
coincidence that about 600 acres or more immediately adjacent to the prairie
swale where the Black Rails are was put into the Conservation Reserve
Program two years back, and is now a sea of Indian Grass. Although the rails
won't use that, the addition of this massive prairie buffer in essence
increased the size of the prairie they occupy many-fold.

Everyone should get down there to hear these birds, even though the chance
of seeing them is quite slim. And everyone should take pains to not do
anything to disturb them, and remain on the roadway and out of the wetlands.
This will be an interesting case to follow.

Somewhat overshadowed by the rails was a singing Alder Flycatcher on the
north side of Radcliff Rd. in the same swale. And there are at least a dozen
territorial Dickcissels in the aforementioned CRP/Indian Grass fields, best
heard and seen by following Radcliff to River Rd, and turning left. The
Dickcissels were all along that stretch of road.

Jim

Jim McCormac
Columbus, Ohio
Like nature? Visit my blog: http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/
Like birds? Join the Ohio Ornithological Society: http://www.ohiobirds.org
<http://www.ohiobirds.org/>



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