This secretive shorebird could soon be classified as a threatened species in Pennsylvania
The black rail bird may soon be listed as a threatened species in Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners voted to preliminarily reclassify the shorebird as state-threatened during a two-day meeting in Erie Sept. 15-16. The proposal will be voted on for final consideration at the January board meeting.
“Black rail is our smallest and most secretive rail. It has a habit of living in marshes and being fairly nocturnal make it the epitome of being a secretive marsh bird,” Patricia Barber, endangered bird biologist, told the board of commissioners.
What are black rails?
Rails have bright red eyes and a sooty coloration. Barber said they are about the size of a bluebird or a quarter of the size of a mourning dove.
“They are relatively rare in Pennsylvania. We have no confirmed nests in Pennsylvania,” she said. Nests need to have eggs, have young in the nests or have young nestlings to be a confirmed nesting site.
She said rails have a limited migration through Pennsylvania, primarily along the Delaware River and Northumberland, Lebanon, Lancaster and Crawford counties.
“During the Breeding Bird Atlas (in 1985, 1986), we had males on territory singing in two different counties,” she said about encounters in Lancaster and Centre counties.
In 2020, a secretive marsh bird survey detected a rail in Jefferson County. Also that year, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service classified the eastern black rail subspecies (Laterallus jamaicensis jamaicensis) as threatened, and indicated up to five breeding pairs occurred in Pennsylvania at that time.
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Barber explained the birds like wetland habitat that is found across the state, mostly in eastern and northwestern Pennsylvania. “The stronghold of black rail nesting sites are along the coastal plains,” she said. Some of the potential nesting habitat could be small marshes less than 3.5 acres in size and have short emergent vegetation surrounding open water. Pastures for cattle could be an example, she pointed out.
Why list black rails as threatened?
Barber explained the threatened listing would align Pennsylvania with the federal listing and provide consistency across the state with federal recovery planning.
There are so few birds here that she said rarely if ever will there be conflicts with humans.
Other threatened species of birds
Three other birds, northern harrier, long-eared owl and red knot, are classified as threatened species in Pennsylvania.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors, X @whipkeyoutdoors and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Secretive black rail bird could enter threatened species status in PA
