The Search for King Rail

Goals: To conduct surveys for Kind Rail in Crawford County, PA, to attempt to detect breeding of this species in a historic breeding range, Ten acoustic recorders will be deployed each year for three months for a minimum of two years to gather field recordings, which will be stored at the University of Pittsburgh. Development of an automated classifier will be completed in partnership with other co-PIs within the Global Center.

Overview: In the first year, 9 recorders were deployed in an area of State Game Lands 213 with historical sightings of Kind Rail to gather recordings. The site was visited several times in person to follow up on purported sounds. A localization grid (33 additional recorders) was placed in a location where Kind Rail may also be potentially present. In the next reporting period, recordings will be collected in spring 2025 from the recorders and analyzed using automated classifiers, with manual review, to investigate the potential presence of Kind Rail. Predictions and analysis of the data, specifically focused on the presence or absence of King Rail vocalizations within the recordings, will be completed by the NextGen. Findings will be described in a manuscript.