Birds With Striped Pants

     Many of us have heard the expression "skinny as a rail".  Six kinds of rails living in North America are sparrow-sized to chicken-sized birds that are laterally compressed to slip easily and quietly through dense vegetation in marshes and wet meadows of tall grass without alerting predators. 
     And rails have several other traits in common that demonstrate their mutual ancestry.  All species are marsh birds that have short tails, short, rounded wings and "striped pants" of vertically streaked feathering on the back parts of their abdomens.  All wade in shallow water in their search for food, are camouflaged, secretive, mostly nocturnal and seldom seen, and call largely at night.  And all have black chicks that are downy and ready to run soon after hatching.     
     Of the six types of rails in North America, three have short beaks and three have long ones.  The short-billed species, black, yellow and sora rails, are the smaller ones in this bird family.  Black rails are hardly larger than sparrows and are black with white speckles.  They live mostly in cordgrass salt marshes along the Atlantic Seaboard and eat insects and small crustaceans.
     Yellow rails are about seven inches long and live in fresh marshes, meadows and grain fields in Central Canada.  They are dull-yellow, and streaked on top for camouflage.  They eat a lot of invertebrates, particularly snails.
     Soras are about nine inches long and mostly gray.  They are the most abundant rail in the northern United States and southern Canada where they summer in cattail marshes.  They eat insects, mollusks, crustaceans and other small invertebrates during the warmer months and seeds in fall and winter.  Their adapting to different food sources through the year made them common and widespread in North America. 
     Virginia, king and clapper rails belong to the long-billed branch of rails.  These species are almost identical in appearance, brownish for camouflage, showing their recent common ancestry.  Virginia rails are about nine inches in length and mostly nest in cattail marshes throughout much of the northern United States.  They consume small animal life, seeds and berries. 
     The uncommon king rails are about 17 inches long and inhabit fresh water marshes in the United States.  They ingest invertebrates and seeds and utter deep, measured calls "kick, kick, kick" on the same pitch.
    Clapper rails are identical to king rails, except their feathering is paler than the kings'.  Clappers live in tidal salt marshes along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts.  This rail is the one most often seen during the day.  When the tide goes out twice a day, clappers roam over the resulting mud flats in quest of mollusks, crustaceans, worms and other aquatic invertebrates, until the water returns with the next high tide. 
     Rails are not often seen, but it's interesting to know they exist in marshes of inches-deep water and tall vegetation.  And it is intriguing to note they are similar in appearance because of their mutual ancestry.