The Clapper Rail Study Team was formed in the early 1990s to give anyone interested the opportunity to participate.  Funding is sought to support the Team’s work, particularly for students and student projects.  The Team is dedicated to implementing recovery actions for the endangered Light-footed Clapper Rail.  Current activities include: the annual survey of the breeding population in southern California; nest searching; maintenance and monitoring of artificial nesting platforms; developing and testing new designs for nesting structures; observations of wild banded and captive pairs; banding; development and refinement of a protocol for captive breeding; and translocation of eggs from the wild and captive-reared rails into wetlands with small populations.

ANNUAL SURVEYS

Each year since 1980 from late February into May about 30 coastal wetlands are visited to determine the number of paired rails in each.  Most of the counts are accomplished in March and April.  The usual technique is to listen for rail calls and interpret those to come up with an estimate of the breeding population.  A pair of rails will call in the evening and early morning, giving a call known as “clappering”.  Because this call can be recognized as coming from two rails calling together, it is also known as the “duet” and is indicative of a pair defending a territory, ready to or in the process of breeding.  Single males and females are also distinguishable by their unique calls and behavior.  By careful listening, correct interpretation, and mapping we can define the makeup of the population in each of the wetlands that still have rails.

NEST SEARCHING

Annual searches for nests are conducted in about 6 wetlands.  A lot of time is spent in Upper Newport Bay because genetics studies indicated that this population has the healthiest, most diverse genetic makeup.  The smaller populations studied had low genetic diversity, raising concern about potential “genetic bottlenecking” in those.  When a nest with eggs is found in Newport, the goal is to find an egg nest in a small “target” marsh at the same stage of incubation and move two of the Newport eggs into the other nest.  The nests are both then monitored to document hatching outcome.  In this way, we are augmenting some of the smaller populations hoping that the genetic shot-in-the-arm will help some of them persist while restored habitat slowly matures.  Of course, a few more eggs, and hopefully rails in a small population should help too.

ARTIFICIAL NESTING PLATFORMS

We learned early on, during initial studies in 1979 that good nesting habitat was limiting for the rails in many wetlands.  In the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, for example the seismically active coast and underground pumping led to subsidence.  The wetland had dropped enough in elevation to allow many more higher tides access to nesting habitat and most nests were destroyed by tidal wash.  So, we copied the way a natural nest works and built them some rafts.  Under optimum conditions the lower marsh, where the rails prefer to nest is dominated by tall cordgrass that is only inundated fully during super high tides.  The rails build a nest of dried cordgrass about 14 inches across and 8 inches thick.  The nest edges are woven into tall living cordgrass stems, so when the tide comes in the nest floats up and down like it is in an elevator shaft.  The rails pull the grass blades from above and intertwine them into a canopy above the nest that hides the nest and holds in the eggs if the tide gets really high.  The rafts started out as simple wooden platforms that were held in place by two upright dowels driven firmly into the marsh substrate through opposing openings in the raft corners.  This kept the rafts in place but allowed them to float up and down on the dowels.  Nesting cover is secured to the center of each raft.  We started with tumbleweeds for cover because the rails tried to place nests in tumbleweeds that randomly lodged in the marsh and some of these actually held eggs that hatched.  We have put nesting platforms into 6 different wetlands and the rails have used them.  In two of those wetlands, the rafts helped foster significant population increases.  Today, we are working on refinements, new cover, and a nest basket that will be affixed near the top of the marsh plant canopy.  The rafts must be monitored each breeding season to document use, problems, and identify possible improvements.

RAIL WATCHING

Rail watching is not an easy thing to do but armed with knowledge of their behavior and a particular site, it is easier than it would be otherwise.  It is essential that we continue to observe rails to enhance our understanding of their behavior, problems, and annual survival.  We have learned a lot watching the captive rails and the banded rails over the years.

BANDING

We have banded a small number of rails per year at Upper Newport Bay to be able to track their travels and relationships through careful and patient observation.  We put 10 to 20 traps in the marsh into small tidal creeks that the rails use as highways and hunting trails.  The traps are deployed for 3 hours in the early morning or, more usually late afternoon.  The traps are checked hourly and any captured rails are brought out to the edge of the marsh where they are examined, measured, and banded with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service aluminum band and one or more colored bands.  Between trap checks we observe on the marsh edge and eat the pizza provided by the newest member of the Study Team.

CAPTIVE BREEDING

Our partners in this endeavor are the Chula Vista Nature Center and Sea World.  The first captive rail was taken into captivity in 1998.  We are currently working on having 5 captive pairs during the 2005 breeding season.  The rails did not breed until 2000 when we finally brought in a second captive pair and they stimulated one another into producing.  Since then, we have released about 100 young rails back into the wild.  This is an extremely exciting and wonderful part of the program.  The captive rails are much more easily observed than their counterparts in the wild and they raise their young right in front of the patient caretakers and observers.