General

Yellow Rail: Small rail with pale yellow-striped, dark brown upperparts. Throat is white, breast is buff, and flanks and belly are barred black-and-white. Head has buff face with dark brown cap and eye patches. Bill is short and yellow. Wings are dark with large white patches visible in flight. Tail is short and black. Sexes are similar. Juvenile is darker.

Range and Habitat

Yellow Rail: Breeds from the Maritime Provinces westward to Alberta and the southern part of the Northwest Territories, northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oregon. Migrates along the Atlantic coast to South Carolina and Florida, spending winters along the entire Gulf Coast, from Florida to south Texas. Breeding grounds include large, wet meadows or shallow marshes with sedges and grasses. Winters on salt marshes, rice fields, and damp meadows.

Breeding and Nesting

Yellow Rail: Seven to ten creamy buff eggs, sometimes spotted with red brown, are laid in a woven cup nest of dead grasses built above the water, typically on a tussock. Incubation ranges from 16 to 18 days and is carried out by the female.

Foraging and Feeding

Yellow Rail: Diet includes snails, beetles, grasshoppers, aquatic bugs, dragonfly nymphs, damselfly nymphs, spiders, crayfish, slugs, leeches, tadpoles, small fish, arrowhead, smartweed, pondweed, bur reed, bristle grass, wheat, oats, bulrush, grass, and spikerush.

Vocalization

Yellow Rail: Males make distinct clicking sounds resembling two stones being banged together "tic-tic, tictictic, tic-tic tictictic."

Similar Species

Yellow Rail: Immature Sora is much larger, has bright yellow bill, white undertail coverts, and darker upperparts spotted with white.