Endangered
Black Rail
Laterallus jamaicensis
The black rail is a mouse-sized member of the rail family Rallidae that occurs in both North and South America.
Appearance
The black rail is a small black bird with a short bill. The body is dark, with white speckles along the back and wings. Both the beak and legs are dark.
It is the smallest rail in North America.
Black rails weigh 29–46 g, are 12–15 cm in length, and have a wingspan of 22–28 cm.
Range and habitat
It is found in scattered parts of North America, the Caribbean, and South America, usually in coastal salt marshes but also in some freshwater marshes. The most suitable habitat for the Black Rail are high marshes. High marsh habitats provide an ideal environment for the Black Rail, as it spends most of its time concealed within the vegetation found in this area.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Its diet includes seeds, insects, crustaceans and mollusks. The black rail forages by feeding along the water lines after high and low tide.
This rail is territorial during the breeding season, and occasionally males will mate with two or more females. In 2015, a breeding population of black rails in South Carolina was rediscovered using camera traps by state biologists.
In crisis
Under the IUCN Red List, the black rail is listed as endangered with decreasing populations. The IUCN estimates there are between 10,000 – 50,000 mature individuals remaining. The largest threats to the black rail are habitat destruction and severe weather events.
Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft recovery plan for the Eastern black rail. This draft plan estimated that it would cost $433 million and 60 years to save the eastern black rail from extinction.
Black Rail is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Black Rail, Wikidata item Q1268977. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
