I went searching for a yellow rail this morning. Naturally, it wasn’t there. The bird had been reported from the Lincoln Park Bird Sanctuary on Friday morning. It was hanging around the larger of the two ponds along the eastern edge of the sanctuary.
While checking some facts on yellow rails in the Encyclopedia of North American Birds, I came across this intriguing note. Under the heading “Incubation,” it said, “Period of [incubation] and age when young first fly unknown.” This is a major indication of just how elusive yellow rails are. Incubation period and the process of development in the young are both very basic pieces of life-history information, but nobody has ever been able to observe yellow rails closely enough to gather this information. Even the eating habits of the species are poorly known, but we can say they are omnivores, eating insects and snails along with seeds, grasses, and leaves.
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The hot line also told me that the big blast of cold air that passed through here last week had brought a host of interesting migrants with it. A lark bunting had been seen near McCormick Place. This is a bird of the short-grass and mixed-grass prairies, and its usual range extends no farther east than Nebraska.
The cooperative attitude of this bird–hanging about for months on end–has allowed lots of people to see it. Some have even videotaped it.
