Kay and I are on our way back to WA from Orange County.  We left midday yesterday and visited Mic, our nephew at U.C. Santa Barbara for dinner.  Today we went north to see Chris, another nephew at Cal Polytech at St. Luis Obispo. Had a nice brunch with him and had another great visit.  From there we drove north about 4 hours to Benicio SRA, a tidal wetlands off San Francisco Bay.  On eBird it seems like it’s one of the more reliable places to find Black rail, so Kay and I headed here with the plan of trying in the afternoon today and if no success again tomorrow at daybreak.  I was able to communicate with Eric Pilotte who birds the area regularly on his morning runs and find out that access from the east side is open 24-hours from the parking lot.

Kay and I started a little after 4 PM and walked out sticking as close as possible to the salicornia marsh for a bit over a mile until the trail headed uphill.  We spent the rest of the afternoon hoping to hear a black rail, playing recordings from time to time.  No luck, and really not much out of the ordinary.  We waited hoping for better luck near sunset, and from a point that juts out into the marsh near the power line we both clearly heard a black rail call  it’s ki-ki-kerr call fairly loudly but only once.  It was pretty unmistakable and we both felt good about calling it a Black Rail,  but we waited another 20 minutes until well after sunset without another call.  We wanted to get back to the parking lot before dark, and so started walking back.  As we got within a couple hundred yards of the lot we heard another Black Rail calling repeatedly much closer.  Fortunately it was right beside a small side loop trail, so we walked down the loop trail and heard the rail calling from about 20 feet distance. No luck on getting a look, but I did get a reasonably good iPhone recording.

Overall a really great afternoon and ABA lifer 690 for me.

Here is the eBird list.