Using Sound to Bring Rails Back into Wetlands

BirdNote^®
Using Sound to Bring Rails Back into Wetlands
Written by Dan Wanschura

Dan Wanschura: This is BirdNote.

   [Sora call with marsh soundscape]

While the Great Lakes region has lost over half of its original wetlands, some are now being restored.

But secretive marsh birds called rails might not realize these are good habitats for them unless they hear other rails calling and hanging out.

Mike Ward is an avian ecologist at the University of Illinois.

Mike Ward: I like to use the analogy of humans and restaurants. If you go by a restaurant and there’s no one there, the thought is it’s not very good, right? So, you assume that there’s something’s wrong with it. You go by another restaurant, there’s a bunch of cars there, you think, ‘Well that must be the place to go.’ You stop and you eat there.

Dan Wanschura: Mike says the same can be true for birds. So, to try to trick rails, audio playback stations were set up in and around a restored wetland area in Michigan. Loudspeakers played recorded rail calls on a loop during their migration.

   [Recording of Sora call being played in a wetland]

Mike Ward says it’s like matchmaking.

Mike Ward: It’s kind of like eHarmony, right?! So, just trying to get, in this case, birds together at the same place at the same time so they can interact. We destroyed a lot of habitat, some bird populations are pretty low, and so the chances of them finding each other are kind of slim, right?! And so all we’re trying to do is provide a cue, and then they start mating, pairing, raising young — those kind of things.

Dan Wanschura: Dustin Brewer, the researcher who conducted this study in Michigan, says three different species of rails, including a rare King Rail, were spotted near these playback test sites. So it seems the audio experiment did the trick.

    [King Rail call]

This story is from Points North – a podcast about the Great Lakes region. Find more information at our website birdnote.org. I’m Dan Wanschura.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Sora ML229399031 recorded by Jessica Gorzo, and King Rail ML566038381 recorded by Sam Miller.
Field recording from Points North Podcast.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2024 BirdNote March 2024
Narrator: Dan Wanschura

ID# rail-01-2024-03-28    rail-01