Clapper Rail

 

A Clapper Rail (Rallus crepitans) peeks from a dense saltmarsh along the Gulf of Mexico. This morning - January 12, 2026 - dawned clear and beautiful, and shortly after leaving the hotel, we passed by an opening in a large coastal saltmarsh that was full of birds. We pulled over, carefully approached the spot, and were able to get fairly close, and just as good, could get on the ground to better depict our subjects on their level.

After shooting more obvious subjects - various herons and egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, ibises, etc. - I noticed a Clapper Rail peeking from the marsh. Soon it became apparent that there were three rails, and two of them, apparently unaware of or indifferent to our presence, came into the open and put on a show.

As always, click the image to enlarge

One of the Clapper Rails poses beautifully, in between bouts of preening. While the big chicken-like birds are probably more extroverted than most of their rail brethren, they'll still dart rapidly back into the vegetation if startled. But we stayed nice and quiet and had about fifteen quality minutes to shoot these birds in primo light.

A Clapper Rail scuttles onto a mudflat, showing its oversized foot. One reason that this big rail is so successful is probably due to its varied diet. They'll eat all manner of readily available fare: worms, crabs, shrimp, all manner of invertebrate animal life, seeds and other plant parts, and even fish. A Ring-billed Gull was nearby when I made these shots, working on a dead fish. One of the Clapper Rails went over and attempted to wrestle with the gull over the fish and did nip away parts of the piscine treat.

The stubby tail of a Clapper Rail, which it frequently holds cocked aloft, in the manner of a wren.

Most rails swim well, and the Clapper Rail is no exception. This one went motorboating about, snapping at morsels on the water's surface and submerging its head to forage on who knows what, in the manner of a dabbling duck.

The Clapper Rail is extremely similar to the King Rail, but they differ consistently in habitat. The former is confined to salt marshes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, while the King Rail favors freshwater marshes and sometimes brackish (slightly salty) wetlands.

Clapper and King rails represent a bit of a taxonomic snarl, and the two "species" are known to hybridize (apparently not frequently, but who knows). While there is still plenty to be learned about these two entities, I am sure, they have recently been carved up. The King Rail was split into two species: the nominate King Rail of much of the eastern U.S., and the fairly recently minted Aztec Rail of central Mexico. The Clapper Rail was cleft into three species: the Clapper Rail of this post, which ranges along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S., Ridgway's Rail of the southeastern U.S., and the Mangrove Rail of Central and South America.

But if you see a rail that looks like this in an American coastal salt marsh, it's about sure to be a Clapper Rail.