The clapper rail was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[5] The genus Rallus had been erected in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[5] The decision to treat the clapper rail as a separate species was based on the results of a molecular phylogenetic study that was published in 2013.

Populations are stable on the East Coast of the U.S., although the numbers of this bird have declined due to habitat loss.

They search for food while walking, sometimes probing with their long bills, in shallow water or mud.