Rufous-faced Crake
Rufirallus xenopterus
Very secretive crake with a relatively long tail and a stout bill. Note the rufous neck and crown that contrast with a black back, the thinly barred black-and-white sides, and the white belly. Inhabits shallow flooded marshes with tussocky or matted grasses. Compare with Red-and-White Crake, which lacks barred wings and has a white (not black) vent, a yellowish (not gray) bill, and gray (not red) legs. Song is a long descending trill.
Identification
The rufous-faced crake is about 14 cm (5.5 in) long and weighs about 52 g (1.8 oz). The sexes are alike. They have a blue-gray bill, legs, and feet. They have a rufous face, hindneck, and upper back; a white throat and belly; and a buffy ochraceous foreneck and breast. Their upperwing coverts, secondaries, and scapulars have black and white bars as do their flanks. Their tail and undertail coverts are black.
Taxonomy
The rufous-faced crake is monotypic.
- Scientific name
- Rufirallus xenopterus
- Authority
- Conover, 1934
- Order
- Gruiformes
- Family
- Rallidae
- Genus
- Rufirallus
Range and habitat
The rufous-faced crake is found in northeastern Bolivia's Beni Department, in several states in south-central Brazil, and in central Paraguay. It is known from perhaps a dozen widely scattered locations in those areas but "given the suitable habitat in intervening areas and elsewhere[...]the species may be more widespread and less local than suspected." It inhabits marshes, especially the zones of moist to shallowly flooded tussocky or matted grass.
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
Migration pattern: Resident species.
Conservation
Population trend: declining.
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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Chunky bird with broad, triangular wings and short, decurved bill. Male dark gray above, pale below, with a black face and throat and very pale underwings. Female with fainter mask and slight rusty wash to breast. Often forages very high up in enormous flocks, sometimes mixed in with White-browed Woodswallows.
Southern Black-Tit
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A large, active, noisy black tit with white shoulders, white edgings to the wing feathers, and a barred gray-and-white undertail. Pairs and small groups form the core of mixed-species feeding flocks in broadleaf woodland and thorn scrub. The species is often detected by its noisy buzzing and chirping vocalizations, including a sweet-and-scratchy “diddy-dzee-dzee-dzee-dzee-dzee.” The very similar Carp’s Tit is black under the tail; ranges only narrowly overlap.
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