Foods 



Crustaceans and aquatic insects are the preferred foods of the King 

 Eail in most areas. Fish, frogs, grasshoppers, crickets, and seeds of 

 aquatic plants also have a high palatability rating with this species. 

 During the winter, particularly when the birds are hard pressed, con- 

 siderable quantities of grain or some other vegetable matter may be 

 consumed. In the southeastern Arkansas rice country, domestic rice 

 formed 30 percent by volume of the King Rail's winter food. A 

 stomach collected in December at Beaver Dam, Wis., was full of wheat. 

 In South Carolina, Audubon (1835, p. 29) examined a gizzard 

 crammed full of oats and collected King Rails in corn fields in autumn 

 near Charleston. 



Some unusual foods found in gizzards include cherry {Prunus sp.) 

 seeds, skunk {Mephitis sp.) hair, feathers and vertebrae of a female 

 Red-winged Blackbird, King Rail eggshell fragments, a small water 

 snake (Natrix sp.), a mouse {Peromyscus sp.), a shrew {Sorex sp.), 

 fall army worms {Laphygma frugiperda) ^ blackgum {Nyssa syl- 

 vatica) seeds, acorns {Quercus sp.) , and pine {Pinus sp.) seeds. A bird 

 collected near Fleming's Landing, Del., on September 30, 1961, had its 

 gizzard crammed with seeds of both waxmyrtle {Myrica cerifera) and 

 bayberry {M. carolinensis) . 



The King Rail is more diversified in its choice of foods than its 

 salt-water relative, the Clapper Rail, as might be expected because of its 

 wider range and more variable ecology, which may find it feeding on 

 the edge of a salt marsh along the coast or in an oat field a thousand 

 miles inland. 



Its adaptability to subsistence on a wide variety of foods in addition 

 to its usual diet of crustaceans and aquatic insects enables the King 

 to winter much further north than is generally realized. A King Rail 

 observed by I. W. Knight at Lorne Park, Ontario, on December 26, 

 1960, remained in that locality until at least mid-January. It was 

 seen along an open stream where it was observed feeding on a frog and 

 the berries of "deadly" nightshade (Solanaceae) (Woodford and Bur- 

 ton, 1961, p. 326). 



In some parts of its breeding range, particularly in brackish tidal- 

 river marshes of the Middle and South Atlantic coast, the King Rail 

 sometimes subsists largely on a 1-item diet, the red-jointed fiddler 

 crab. 



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