King/Clapper Rail
2 July 1993
Balmorhea Lake,
Reeves Co., Texas
These images scanned from 35mm slides

I am 90%+ convinced these are King Rails and not Clapper. In Texas, at least, Clapper is very much a coastal salt water species, but there are exceptions. King and Clapper are both very rare inland in Texas, but King far more common with dozens of inland records while Clapper only has one such record as far as I am aware. The story behind these birds is that several people heard King/Clapper Rails calling in the marsh at Balmorhea Lake in west Texas in the early summer, 1993. I went there with a few others on July 2, 1993, and we were able to coax several of these birds into the open for photos with King rail tape recordings (the birds responded to both King and Clapper recordings, which are very similar). I was not able to get tape recordings of these birds on this occasion, however. What we can see in the images is a rail, very rich in color on the sides, underparts and lower flanks with strong black and white barring, unlike the more muted colors typical of Clapper. The face of the birds is not as bright as on many (most) Kings. Images 1 and 2 show the bird moving through marsh grass while image 3 shows the bird vocalizing. Although I'm not sure how to positively say these are Kings or not, the Texas Ornithological Society "Handbook of Texas Birds" considers these Kings (page 87) as do most other publications, now 20+ years removed from the events. I'll post this record just for the historical value in case some of you are interested.

In the summer 1993 issue of the Texas Region in American Birds magazine, @gcwarbler and I wrote the following about this record.
"A surprising record was of five calling King/Clapper Rails at a fresh-water marsh at L. Balmorhea July 2 (KB, MR, GL et al.). One of the birds was photographed but we are still not certain of the sp. involved. Some races of Clapper Rails from the interior of Mexico appear visibly brighter than their salt-water relatives approaching the brightness of Kings. Either sp. would represent a significant record for the Trans-Pecos Region."

and the following spring we wrote:

Spring 1994
"A calling King Rail at L. Balmorhea May 7 (GL, CJ) provided continuing evidence of a possible nesting population in that Trans-Pecos location."

Since these records there have been a few other reports there as I recall, but I don't know how many were photographed or if any were photographed. I will post these here at genus level, but it would take some convincing to get me to believe they are not Kings. I would welcome any thoughts, but if you choose to ID this bird as one species or the other I'd really be interested in your reasons. These images have been looked at and commented on by many very knowledgeable folks over the years and the consensus is King, with the caveat...."probably"