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March 22, 2008
Eight participants went tromping through the salt marsh of the Sargent Unit of the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge in search of the ellusive Yellow and Black Rails. We were afforded the opportunity of assisting Jennifer Wilson and Charlie Brower in their rail monitoring project. All eight participants found out that it is real hard work to to find and flush these rails. I was proud of all the participants for hanging tough for as long as they could. This is not easy work and it is among the hardest type of field work ornithologist do. Everybody who went on this trip should be proud of themselves. I am pleased to report that we found and banded three rails: two Yellow Rails and one Black Rail. I thought it was ironic that we wound up capturing the only Black Rail of the night on our last transect about 50 meters from where the cars were parked. It worked out perfect so those participants that got tired and were waiting for us on the road got the opportunity to see this truely exquiste rail. All in all it was a slower evening then I had hoped for in terms of total number of birds captured. That just goes to show that going out looking for Yellow and Black Rails can be like going on a pelagic trip where some trips are great with loads of birds being seen and others can be dull with very little bird activity except for the fact that going for the rails is a lot harder work. The other highlight for the evening was seeing a six-foot Western Diamondback Rattlesnake posturing in the road as we were driving to the site we were going to look for rails in. For those snake lovers we did not kill the snake. Charlie forcefully ushered it off the road and back into the marsh so we would not run over it. It was trully a beautiful snake and it was really neat to see it raised up and posturing like that. I believe that is a pretty rare sight around these parts. A big thanks goes to Jennifer Wilson and Charlie Brower for allowing us to come out and assist them in finding the rails so they could capture and band them. I believe that all participants enjoyed themselves in spite of how difficult this trip was.
~ Adam Wood, OG Field Trip Coordinator, birdsondabrain@earthlink.net, 713-515-1692 |
