#king rail

[great-and-small]

My fellow bird nerds will understand the breathless excitement I felt to turn a corner in the wetlands and witness this quiet scene! The secretive King Rail is a bird I’ve rarely been able to photograph, let alone film. How cool that my first chance to catch one on video was such a gorgeous and relaxed bird.

[run-bird-run]

King Rail (Rallus elegans)

© Clive Harris

[antiqueanimals]

Virginia Wildlife; vol. 32, no. 10. October, 1971. Illustration by John W. Taylor.

Internet Archive

[gloooth]

Trick or Treat!!! :>

happy halloween! you get... a king rail :)

[birbmania]

King rail . . . Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Milton, Delaware . . . 5/18/21

[birdstudies]

October 15, 2019 - King Rail (Rallus elegans)

These rails are found in freshwater and brackish marshes in parts of the eastern United States, eastern Mexico, and the Caribbean. They feed on small crustaceans, clams, fish, frogs, small snakes and mammals, insects, spiders, fruit, and seeds, usually capturing their prey in shallow water. Males choose the nesting sites and do most of the building, often constructing several additional simpler nests, some of which are used as shelter for the chicks. The nests are platforms above the water, built from marsh grasses with a base of decaying vegetation and hidden in grass or sedges. Both parents incubate the eggs and feed the chicks.

[plushnstuff]

If Kazooie was a real bird she would be a king rail.

[radioactivepeasant]

Seeing all those hilarious and adorable pictures of potoo birds just now made me think about how much I love birds in general.

Like, I don't know any sciencey things about them -- outside of the "don't handle a baby bird or the mom won't take it back" thing being a myth -- but I can definitely appreciate them regardless. I think part of it, besides them just generally being cool, is that when I was a wee tiny thing, my parents taught me to feed a flock of mourning doves and a flock of pigeons that lived in our neighborhood. It was one of my chores when I was big enough to carry the birdseed, actually. And the mourning doves were comfortable enough with us to make a nest in the hanging plant next to our door for years. They didn't seem to mind us tiptoeing to see them and their babies much.

So a fun question for all of you!

What's the coolest bird you've ever seen irl? Can be any bird, the coolness is pretty subjective.

For example, I'm between the King Rail and the Barred Owl. The King Rail because it ran past the front of my car once doing the most awkward bobbing stride I'd ever seen, and I was nowhere near any bodies of water. (Still don't know what the little guy was doing in farmland!)

The Barred Owl I like because it's just a beautiful bird, and I love owls in general, and it was the first owl I ever learned to identify without a guidebook. Reading the Guardians of Ga'Hoole books as a kid probably accounted for that.