Yellow Rail

Very few people have ever seen a yellow rail, as it is one of the most secretive birds in North America. Migrating from remote wetlands in central Canada to the Gulf Coast in winter, it rarely makes a sound or flies, spending months walking beneath thick grasses of coastal prairie, longleaf pine flatwoods, and coastal high marsh. Given extensive human conversion of these habitats, it has experienced substantial population declines. One ff the best ways to get a glimpse of this bird is at the Yellow Rails and Rice Festival, where they stopover in rice fields in migration and are flushed during the ratoon rice harvest in October and November.