Spotted Crakes
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The Spotted Crake (Porzana porzana) is a small waterbird of the family Rallidae, which includes rails, crakes, coots, and gallinules.
Distribution / Habitat:
Spotted Crakes are very secretive in the breeding season, and are then mostly heard rather than seen.
Their breeding habitats are the marshes and sedge beds across temperate Europe into western Asia. This is a migratory species, wintering in Africa and India.
They nest in a dry location in marsh vegetation, laying 6-15 eggs.
Description:
At 19-22.5 cm length, Spotted Crakes are slightly smaller than Water Rails, and are about the size of a starling.
Breeding adults have short, straight bills, which are yellow with a red base. Adults have mainly brown upperparts and blue-grey breast, with dark barring and white spots on the flanks. They have green legs with long toes, and a short tail which is buff underneath.
Immature Spotted Crakes are similar, but the blue-grey is replaced by brown. The downy chicks are black, as with all rails.
The only confusion species is the Sora, a rare vagrant from North America. However, that species lacks the breast spotting and has an unstreaked crown stripe.
Diet:
These birds probe with their bill in mud or shallow water, also picking up food by sight. They mainly eat insects and aquatic animals.
Song / Call:
They are then noisy birds, with a distinctive repetitive whiplash-like hwuit, hwuit call. They can be easier to see on migration.
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