Working Bibliography of the Eastern Black Rail Along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of North America

The black rail (Laterallus jamaicensis) is the most secretive of the secretive marsh birds and one of the least understood bird species in North America. The eastern subspecies (L. J. jamaicensis) has undergone a southward range contraction over the past one hundred years and populations in the mid-Atlantic appear to have declined by as much as 90% over the past thirty years. Recent changes have led to concerns within the conservation community and urgency to learn as much as possible about the requirements of the form and its historic status and distribution. Much of the collective knowledge of the eastern black rail along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts is scattered in bits and pieces throughout more than 100 years of literature. An identified need has been to gather available literature together to compile what is known and to identify information gaps moving forward.

The objective of this effort is to compile a bibliography of published and unpublished literature focused on the eastern black rail along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of North America. This effort follows previous projects that have compiled working bibliographies for the closely related California black rail (L. J. coturniculus) in 1980 and the mid-western or inland population of the eastern black rail in 2012.