I traveled to Kansas City recently to attend the Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference, an annual event held in various midwestern states, including Minnesota. This year’s host state was Kansas.
The gathering is attended by upwards of 400 people, mostly fisheries and wildlife professionals, as well as university professors and students, vendors and many others who are interested in fish and wildlife management, research and more.
One of the many presentations that I enjoyed attending was given by a PhD student studying “Fall rail migratory timing and stopover duration in the Illinois River Valley.”
Her talk was both interesting and familiar to me, as I, too, once employed similar techniques to survey rails in the wetlands I studied in North Dakota for my master’s research project almost 25 years ago. It was reassuring to me that, despite many advancements in wildlife research, some techniques to locate and assess wildlife abundance hasn’t changed a whole lot.
A favorite marsh bird of mine, the diminutive sora rail at not even 9 inches long and three ounces in weight, does indeed migrate — as do other seasonal wetland birds — albeit they often do so in the dark of night.
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When the birds are flushed from cover, they appear to be weak fliers, barely flying over the tops of slough grasses and cattails before fluttering quickly into nearby cover. Soras are shy by nature and rarely step far from the protection of dense vegetation.
Like other species of rails, sora rails are not comfortable foraging in the open and tend to inhabit wetlands overgrown with tall emergent vegetation such as cattail, reed and sedge.
Within such environs, the skulking sora hunts for food. Topping the list of good things to eat include mollusks and insects, especially aquatic larval forms like dragonflies and mosquito larvae. Later in the summer, the birds feast on grains of wild rice and the seeds of sedge, smartweed and grasses.
Physically, the sora is very adept at life in the marsh. Small and plump with longish legs and slender non-webbed chicken-like toes, the minute-sized bird deftly navigates the tangles of wetland vegetation as effortlessly as a snake through the grass.
They have the ability to practically walk on water, utilizing floating vegetative debris for support as they go about their lives. Soras also negotiate wetland vegetation by clinging to and hopping from plant stem to plant stem, thus making as much use, if not more, of vertical substrate as the horizontal.
If you’re lucky enough to catch sight of the sora, you might note his habit of peeking out as though checking around the corners of a building before venturing onto the street from the back alley.
A short and stubby yellow bill, black patch on the face and throat, grayish below, and brownish above with gray cheeks marks the sora’s coloration. Both sexes are similar in appearance.
Despite the fact that the sora remains misunderstood and mysterious to many people (indeed, wildlife research biologists often categorize rails and a few other marsh birds as, “secretive species”), the bird is a common, graceful, and handsome denizen of our Minnesota marshes.
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Their vocalization usually reveals their presence, and thus how researchers and birders know that sora rails occupy wetland habitats. Surprisingly loud for the bird’s size, the sora’s call is usually described as sounding like the whinny of a horse. They also give a two-noted “sor-ah” call, hence their unusual name — sora.
Though we are probably three months away from hearing and observing soras in northern Minnesota’s wetlands, rest assured that these little marsh birds will soon be on their way from their winter hiding spots much further south.
They and many other wetland birds, songbirds and more, will arrive here once again as we get out and enjoy the great outdoors.
Blane Klemek is a Minnesota DNR wildlife manager. He can be reached at bklemek@yahoo.com.
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