Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Secretive Sora
By: Tom Berg
There is a very secretive bird out there that is an expert at evading the sight of most people. It is a relatively small bird that loves wetlands and marshy areas, and it spends most of its time walking along muddy shorelines amid reeds and thick cattail stands looking for food. It is the Sora, and it is also called the Sora rail or the Carolina rail.
The Sora is about the size of a blackbird or an American robin, but it is much more “football shaped” than either of those birds. Their plump bodies are mostly a mottled brown color with a light gray chest. Their head is very distinctive, with a red eye and a black mask from the eye to the beak and down onto the throat. The beak is bright yellow, too, which is hard to forget.
Soras have greenish-yellow legs and long toes which help them walk on shoreline weeds and thick mats of floating or submerged vegetation. Walking in the shallows also helps them avoid shore-bound predators like foxes and coyotes. Soras tend to walk quickly, searching the shallow water for snails, aquatic beetles and dragonfly nymphs (among other creepy crawlers). They also relish small seeds from bulrushes, cattails, marsh grasses and other aquatic weeds.
Even though Soras are very good at hiding from people, they are actually the most abundant species of rail in all of North America. They breed in many of our Midwestern states, all the way up into northern Canada. They spend their winters in the southern United States, Central America and even as far south as South America, so they have no problem with making long distance migration flights. Like many bird species, they usually migrate at night.
Keep an eye out for the diminutive Sora the next time you are walking along the weedy shoreline of your favorite lake, pond or marsh. You may just catch a glimpse of this cool little bird as it hurries along in the shallows.
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