Food Habits of the King Rail in the Arkansas Rice Fields

Abstract

THIS paper on the food habits of the King Rail (Rallus elegans) is a continuation of a life history study of this species in the Arkansas rice fields (Meanley, 1953). Specimens and data on feeding behavior were obtained from 1950 to 1955. Most of the stomachs representing the nesting season were taken from dead rails found along local highways; winter specimens were furnished by Carl Kitler, local mink trapper who caught about one a day along his trap line. I am indebted to U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service co-workers E. R. Kalmbach, Alexander C. Martin, Robert T. Mitchell, and Francis M. Uhler for the identification of several food items found in gizzards; and to Dr. Martin, Johnson A. Neff, Charles C. Sperry, and Robert E. Stewart for reviewing the manuscript. Feeding Behavior.-During April, May, and early June it is not unusual to see 15 or 20 King Rails in the evening feeding along ditches bordering certain highways leading out of Stuttgart, Arkansas. After the middle of June, the rails move out of the roadside ditches and canals into adjacent rice fields where they are found until harvest. During the winter they are found about the network of rice field canals and natural drainage, spending much of their time along runways beneath matted vegetation. The most active feeding periods appeared to be in the early morning and the late afternoon or evening, usually till dusk. Rails were also found to feed sporadically throughout the day, tapering off or stopping for short rests during periods of intense heat. I once kept a pair of rails under constant observation for 2 hours while they fed in the vicinity of their nest during the middle of the day. The feeding bird passed back and forth near the nest and often came within a few inches of its incubating mate. On other occasions individuals seen feeding steadily for a half hour or more along a ditch during the heat of midday in June stopped under a tussock of grass and remained motionless for from 5 to 20 minutes before resuming activity. Rails do most of their feeding in places concealed by plant cover or in relatively open areas where they blend well with their surroundings. Occasionally, however, the birds are very conspicuous, as when feeding on mud flats or in recently flooded fields where rice sprouts are 3 or 4 inches in height. W. Leon Dawson (1903: 443) observed similar rail-feeding activity in open areas in Ohio: In a region where