September 18, 2020

The photo you saw to get here was taken at the Tuckahoe Wildlife Management area shortly before Labor Day weekend. The shirts were courtesy of our terrific neighbors and the Life Is Good store…thanks, Andy & Lynn (and Happy Belated Birthday, Andy)!

Unfortunately, that day we saw a dead mud turtle and 2 dead box turtles on the way there. So, just giving you all a heads up that the turtles are still out there and crossing the roads: so please keep an eye out for them so you don’t run them over.

The good news is—speaking of neighbors Andy & Lynn—we all got to watch an immature clapper rail (pictured here) tamely hunting for fiddler crabs in our back yard at high tide. Since he has some rusty-colored plumage, we decided to name him Rusty.

We have loved watching and listening to common clapper rails over the years in the salt marsh behind our house. It’s even more fun to see them with their babies! For videos of rail families (also referred to as mud hens), SCROLL DOWN…

These baby rails are a little older than the ones in the video above, and are even faster and foraging some by themselves. On occasion, we’ve seen big gulls take off with a baby while all the parent can do is run after the gulls and make a lot of noise. Sometimes, but not often enough, we’re able to get in the way of the gull and save the baby rail. This is why we were concerned about seeing those rare baby ducks, in one of our earlier blogs and afraid a gull would get one, and maybe one did because later we only saw 5 baby ducks instead of 6.

But the good news is rails often have lots of babies—7 to 11, .sometimes 5 to 12 at a time! We’ve had fun counting how many babies we can see—and there are plenty of rails on the salt marshes now (people used to hunt rails for food).

We love listening to adult rails call to each other across the salt marshes at dusk. One starts out with the loud, harsh “kek-kek-kek” and then another will call from a distance. It reminds us of that old show, The Waltons, where just before bedtime they would call out “Good night, John-boy” and “Good night Maryellen” etc., to each other in turn. It also sometimes seems like one rail must tell a really good joke, and soon a chorus of rails all seem to be laughing at it at once!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our anniversary gift of rail sightings! Thanks as always for reading.

Turtlesinger, Inc.

is a Federal 501(c)3 Public Charity - New Jersey Charities Registration # CH2998200
Mission Statement: To educate and entertain the public about turtles with original songs and/or live turtles.

Rusty the Rail