Reverse the Rollback of the MBTA
Speak out to reinstate critical bird protections under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Adult. Photo: Becky Matsubara/Flickr (CC-BY-2.0)
Rallus obsoletus
Conservation status | Most populations should be considered threatened or endangered because of extremely limited habitat. |
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Family | Rails, Gallinules, Coots |
Habitat | Salt marshes along the coast, also brackish and freshwater marshes inland. Along the Pacific Coast, strictly a bird of salt marsh, sometimes in adjacent brackish marsh. The "Yuma" Clapper Rail inhabits freshwater marsh along the lower Colorado River and nearby areas. |
Forages by walking in shallow water or on mud, especially on falling tide or at low tide, picking up items from the ground or vegetation, sometimes probing in mud or water.
Usually 7-11, sometimes 5-12 or more. Pale yellow to olive-buff, blotched with brown and gray. Incubation is by both sexes, 23-29 days.
Downy young may leave nest soon after hatching. Both parents probably feed young. Parents may brood young in a separate nest from the one in which the eggs hatched. Young can fly in about 9-10 weeks.
Includes crustaceans, insects, fish. Diet varies with locality, and includes a wide variety of small prey. Crustaceans often favored, especially crabs, also crayfish and others. Also eats many aquatic insects, small fish, mollusks, worms, frogs. Eats seeds at times.
Courtship displays are not well known. Male may feed female. Nest site is in clump of grass or other vegetation in marsh, near the upper reaches of high tide, or on bank near water. Nest (built mostly by male) is well-built cup of grasses and sedges, lined with finer material, often with vegetation woven into a canopy over nest. Often a ramp of plant material leads from ground up to nest.
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.
Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.
Newly passed western water package will support 21st century infrastructure, water supply security, and ecological resilience.
Reabrir la Planta Desaladora de Yuma—con su tecnología antigua—demasiado caro y demasiado dañino
The restoration of the Sonoma Creek in the San Francisco Bay Area not only corrects problems of the past, but also looks to the future.
With Audubon’s expertise in both Western water policy and conservation science, we are uniquely positioned to identify long-term water-management solutions that will secure a reliable water supply for wildlife and for people throughout the West.
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