07/01/2007

On the Wing

Virginia rail ventures out

By Kay Charter
Local columnist

Read past On the Wing columns here

Several weeks ago, a family of common ravens landed in one of our fields that had been treated with herbicide and then planted with native prairie grass. Because prairies are home to warm-season grasses, the year-old clumps of little bluestem had just begun to grow, thus the visit from the family of big, raucous blackbirds who could easily forage in the stubble of last year's growth.

It was just after the break of dawn and I was walking along our drive to collect our morning paper when the hoarse, croaking calls of the ravens caught my attention.

Immediately I became aware of the birds, a doe raced from a nearby thicket and gave chase to them, whereupon they leapt into the air. Then they resettled in the field.

The doe chased again and they repeated their jump up-and-drop back maneuver. This skirmish went on for at least five minutes before the ravens left and the doe returned to the woodland edge where she'd likely left a fawn in hiding.

It was a new, and entirely unexpected, experience.

Similar experiences this year include a green-tailed towhee hanging on our thistle feeder when we were in west Texas (ground feeders, towhees are unlikely to cling to a thistle tube) and a yellow-rumped warbler taking peanut bits from a peanut feeder after we got home. But the most astonishing sighting was one I didn't see personally.

In late May, Alan Slater from Standard Sand Company in Grand Haven called to ask for help identifying a bird.

"We checked our field guide and we think this is a Virginia rail,” Slater said.

Standard Sand is a subsidiary of Fairmount Minerals, a company dedicated to preserving and creating as much healthy bird habitat as possible. A friendly competition exists between company sites, with each jockeying for the highest numbers of species or the "best” bird sightings. Many employees have worked to develop birding skills in an effort to identify either additional species or more unusual ones.

A rail would certainly come under that last category, but since it was seen in an open, sandy area, it seemed an unlikely call. I said as much.

Alan described the bird as chunky with an orange down-curved bill and long slender toes. Although the description was right for a Virginia rail, the habitat and behavior (hanging around in the open) definitely was not.

He said that Standard employee Jeremy Dove was able to get several pictures. Dubious about the identification, I asked that the photos be e-mailed to me. In spite of the fact that Slater is a careful observer who makes few mistakes, I was amazed to open the message and find an image of a Virginia rail.

Denizens of dense wetland vegetation, rails are by nature very secretive birds. Some, such as the smaller yellow rail and diminutive black rail are extremely difficult to see even in appropriate habitat. But even slightly less shy rallids such as king, clapper and Virginia rails spend their lives tucked into marshes to which they are so well adapted. They are much more apt to be heard than seen, even in places where they nest.

Two rail species have nested on Charter Sanctuary, indeed they may still do so, but we can count on one hand the number of times we have seen either of them. This family of birds is so reclusive that much is still unknown about them including, what, precisely, they feed their young.

Only three rails are currently known to nest in Michigan, including sora, yellow and Virginia. All withdraw after breeding, wintering along the southern coasts of our country and as far down as Guatemala. It is largely during migration that the Virginia rail may be found outside its normal habitat.

Occasionally, according to noted bird expert Kenn Kaufman, even on city streets. Or, in this case, in a completely open area of a commercial sand mine.

The best thing about this particular rail, Slater said later, was that it hung around long enough for everyone to see it well.

Good thing; it was one of those experiences not likely to occur again.

Kay Charter is executive director of Saving Birds Thru Habitat, an organization that teaches people how to help migrating birds whose populations are declining