Water Rail

The water rail is a rail 23–28 cm long that breeds in well-vegetated wetlands across Europe, Asia and North Africa. Like other rails it has a laterally flattened body, which lets it move easily through reed beds. The upperparts are mainly brown, the underparts blue-grey with black barring on the flanks, the toes long, the tail short and the bill long and reddish. Downy chicks are black, and immature birds are like adults but buff where adults are blue-grey (Wikipedia, general species account).

Northern and eastern populations migrate, and one subspecies is a partial migrant, with some birds wintering from Iraq and eastern Saudi Arabia through Pakistan and northern India to western China; it may be found in rice paddies or on floating islands, and in Kashmir in flooded sugarcane fields, where laying is in late May. The off-white blotched eggs are incubated mainly by the female and the chicks hatch in 19–22 days. The eastern form is now usually treated as a separate species, the brown-cheeked rail. SoIB 2023 lists it as a resident and winter migrant of wetland, and does not assign a priority category (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).