NATURAL HISTORY OF THE KING RAIL 



105 



cells is about 3 feet by 3 feet ; flattened out, each cell section is approxi- 

 mately 9 feet in length by II/2 feet in width. The top is 7 feet by 4 feet. 



The trap is best made of hardware cloth or welded wire. A less 

 expensive and also less durable trap can be made of 1-inch poultry 

 mesh (chicken wire). A trap made of poultry mesh should have a 

 hardware cloth gathering cage. 



The lead wire or drift fence should be a minimum of 1 foot in height. 

 Two feet is better. One-inch poultry mesh is an ideal size for the drift 

 fence. Downy young of banding age can probably get through a 2-inch 

 mesh. 



The length of the lead or drift fence depends upon the trapping 

 situation. In marshy impoundments at the Patuxent Wildlife Research 

 Center near Laurel, Md., I used some half-dozen different trapping 

 designs at various times. 



The trap is placed in that part of a marsh known to be inhabited by 

 rails. Their presence is determined by hearing a bird call regularly 

 from the same area during the course of several consecutive days, by 

 locating a nest, or by hearing the cries of young that have been sep- 

 arated from their parents. The general area should be checked for 

 tracks, droppings, and fragments of crayfish or other rail foods, and 

 when tracks along a well-worn runway or path are found, the strategy 

 then is to block it off with the drift fence. 



Rails often feed along the edge of a marsh on a mud flat bordering 

 open water. In such a situation, the drift fence shoiild extend a foot 

 or so out into open water and landward 10 or 15 feet (or more) to the 

 trap. At low tide, in cordgrass marshes in Delaware, King and Clapper 

 Rails feed along the exposed muddy bottoms of narrow creeks. In such 

 a situation, a drift fence leading to a trap on either bank can be placed 

 across the creek. Thus the rail's passage is cut off, and it tends to 

 follow the fence toward the trap and often goes into it. 



In a 10-acre shrub swamp-marsh mixture at the Patuxent Wildlife 

 Research Center, the most select area for rails was in a 1-acre cattail 

 patch. By placing four all-purpose traps about 30 feet apart in a row 

 and connecting them with drift fences, I was able to block off an exten- 

 sive area and succeeded in catching many rails (King, Virginia, and 

 Sora). Numerous Common Snipe {Capella gallinago)^ Red-winged 

 Blackbirds, Rusty Blackbirds {Eiiphagus carolinm), Swamp Spar- 

 rows and Song Sparrows were also captured. A few Wood Ducks, 

 Woodcocks, American Bitterns (Botaurus lentiginosus) ^ and Green 

 Herons {Butorides virescens) were taken as well. The trap placed at 

 the pond end of the cattail patch caught more rails than did the three in 

 the interior of the patch. 



TENDING TRAPS 



The number of times a day that traps should be tended depends 

 somewhat upon the size of the population in the area of interest and 



