The Sora is a small, secretive marsh bird—about 7½–9 inches long—with olive-brown upperparts, gray face and breast, and finely barred flanks. In Arizona, Soras are most often encountered as spring migrants (late April through May) and fall migrants (September into early October), when they move through cattail and bulrush-dominated marshes and wet meadows in the Lower Colorado River Valley, along the Santa Cruz and Gila rivers, and at scattered high-elevation wetlands. A handful of winter records—especially in year-round marshes near Tucson and Yuma—attest to their occasional overwintering, but numbers remain very low. Because they are unusually shy, Soras are far more often heard than seen: their descending “whinny” and sharp, metallic “kek” calls at dawn and dusk give them away in the dense marsh vegetation. They feed by pecking and probing shallow water and soft mud for aquatic invertebrates, seeds and plant detritus. Although there are a few unconfirmed summer reports that hint at possible breeding, no nesting colonies have been reliably documented in Arizona.
