African Rail
Rallus caerulescens
Classic, mid-sized rail. Note the brown back, gray head and chest, barred belly, and reddish bill and legs. Found in wetlands ranging from flooded grassland to deep swamps. Especially favors cattail marshes. Fairly reclusive but walks out into the open more often than most rails. Usually detected by call, a loud, accelerating series of notes that descend the scale. Shares a similar color pattern with African Crake, but African Rail has a longer bill and an unspotted back.
Identification
Adults are 27–28 cm (11–11 in) long, and have mainly brown upperparts and blue-grey underparts, with black-and-white barring on the flanks and undertail. The sexes have similar plumage but the female is smaller. This is the only Rallus species with a plain back. The body is flattened laterally to allow easier passage through the reeds. They have long toes, a short tail and a long slim dull red bill. The legs are red. Immature birds are similar to the adults, but the blue-grey is replaced by buff.<p>They are noisy birds, with a trilled whistled treee-tee-tee-tee-tee call.
Taxonomy
The African 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. He placed it with all the other rails in the genus Rallus and coined the binomial name Rallus caerulescens. Gmelin based his description on the "blue necked rail" from the Cape of Good Hope that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. The naturalist Joseph Banks had provided Latham with a water-colour drawing of the rail by Georg Forster who had accompanied James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The picture was painted in 1773 at the Cape of Good Hope. It is now the holotype for the species and is held by the Natural History Museum in London. The specific epithet caerulescens is from Latin and means "bluish". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
- Scientific name
- Rallus caerulescens
- Authority
- Gmelin, JF, 1789
- Order
- Gruiformes
- Family
- Rallidae
- Genus
- Rallus
Range and habitat
Its breeding habitat is marshes and reedbeds across eastern and southern Africa from Ethiopia to South Africa. Many birds are permanent residents, but some undertake seasonal movements in response to the availability of wetland.
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
The African rail nests in a dry location in marsh vegetation, both sexes building the cup nest. The typical clutch is 2–6 heavily spotted creamy-white eggs, which are incubated by both sexes for about 20 days to hatching. The precocial downy chicks are black, as with all rails.<p>These birds probe with their bill in mud or shallow water, also picking up food by sight. They mainly eat insects, crabs and other small aquatic animals.
Conservation
- Population trend
- unknown
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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Plump, short-tailed, and long-legged bird found in Andean cloud forest in Ecuador, northern Peru, and the central Andes of Colombia; also known from one site in Colombia’s eastern Andes. Plumage is chestnut-brown with a slightly paler belly. Smaller and plainer than other highland antpittas in its range. Stays low inside high elevation cloud forest and heard far more often than seen. Songs include a short, whistled “wit, wi-di-dit” and a descending trill. Formerly called Rufous Antpitta.
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Plump ground-dwelling dove, not very colorful compared with other quail-doves. Gray overall, darker brownish on wings, with paler whitish face and dark mustache line. Pinkish-red legs. Iridescent purple patch on back can be difficult to see. Sexes alike. Prefers forests, usually on the ground unless flushed up into the lower levels of a tree. Like most quail-doves, often best seen by quietly walking along trails at dawn and dusk.
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