Most of these Clapper Rail images were captured from the wooden walkway which extends into the middle of the marshland behind the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center in Palo Alto, California. Home to four species of rails (Clapper, Virginia, Sora & Black), the 1,940-acre Baylands Preserve is the largest tract of undisturbed marshland remaining in the San Francisco Bay. Rails are masters of stealth and are usually easier to spot during periods of extremely high winter tides when the rising water makes it more difficult for them to hide in the pickle-weed, cordgrass, salt grass and other native marshland vegetation. Under normal conditions, the marshland plants overhang each other, so even a chicken-sized bird like the Clapper Rail is hard to see from above. The transparent nictitating membrane on the eyes of the rails(visible in one of the gallery images) protect their eyes while they're scurrying under, and through, the vegetation.

*An endandered sub-species of the Clapper Rail (R. longirostris) found principally in Califonia's San Francisco Bay, Monterey Bay and Morro Bay. It's a chicken-sized bird which rarely flies. The population levels of the California Clapper Rail are precariously low due to destruction of its coastal and estuarine marshland habitat by prior land development and shoreline fill. Mussels, clams, arthropods, snails, worms and small fish are its preferred foods, which it retrieves by probing and scavenging the surface while walking.

* From Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Clapper_Rail)