[EBB Sightings] Black Rail continues looking for love--Coyote Hills

Hi all:

The Coyote Hills Black Rail called continuously from 6:45 this morning to 7:15.  I have some recordings via my camera. I'll download them tonight and see if they're audible to anyone other than Clark Kent. I can hear the call clearly when I replay the video and press the camera to my ear, but that may or may not translate to audibility for the average listener via flickr.  

The call was not part of any other call, was not a departure from any other call, it was a non-stop ke-keke-durr, ke-keke-durr, mixed with the 3-syllable keke-durr.  Having spent too much time praying for this call to rise out of Arrowhead Marsh in 2008, I recognize it when it's not coming out of my ipod. By the way, my ipod was dead this morning, so there was no inducement. The rail was calling from the moment I got out of my car until I chose to leave, and probably for considerable time after 7:15. 

As Ken described, the Black Rail is calling from North of the entrance road, approximately 100 yards west of the entry-kiosk ($5-ca-ching), probably less, just after you clear the trees on the right and a last outlying copse of willows. Those with decent hearing could likely pick up the call as far away as the entry-kiosk.

>From the Breeding Bird Atlas of Santa Clara Co., California (Bousman): "Evans et al. detected 608 Black Rails in the SF Bay estuary, but the only responses south of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge were from two birds heard on 16 Jun 1988 at the east end of the Dumbarton Bridge, Alameda County, in pickleweed-dominated tidal marshes with patches of bulrushes."

Lost in yesterday's e-mails was a clarification re: habitat. Unless I'm mistaken, this area of marsh surrounded by hills and levees, is not a tidal marsh dominated by pickleweed. This habitat is a freshwater marsh more closely resembling that of the foothills marshes of more recent Black Rail nesting natural history.

I'll post a note tonight w/reference to my flickr site if I get anything audible. If anyone wants to come down to Cupertino and press their ear against my camera, zap me a note.

Good  birding,

Bob Power
Oakland, CA