Spotted crake

Voice

A sharp, far-carrying hwitt, like a whiplash or a drop falling into an empty barrel, given exactly once a second and repeated for hours at an unvarying pace. It starts only in full darkness, from late April into June, and carries over a kilometre on still nights. Little Crake accelerates and falls in pitch, Baillon's rattles dryly; Spotted Crake stays one detached note at a fixed tempo.

Identification

Smaller than Moorhen, olive-brown with dense white spots and flecks across head, neck and flanks, as though paint had been flicked over it. The bill is short and yellow with a red spot at the base, the legs green. Decisive are the plain buff undertail coverts, unbarred, and the brown, diffusely streaked flanks. Views are usually brief, along a muddy reed edge.

Confusion species

Little and Baillon's Crakes are clearly smaller, lack white spotting on the breast and show boldly barred black-and-white flanks; Spotted Crake has plain buff undertail coverts where those two are barred. Water Rail is bigger with a long red bill. A juvenile Moorhen is larger, plainer and unspotted.

Habitat

Shallow, silting marsh with a mosaic of sedge, reedmace, club-rush and open mud, the water only a few centimetres deep. It avoids deep water and closed reedbeds. In the Netherlands it favours young, wet restoration sites and marshes where spring levels stay high, so availability varies sharply from year to year.

Range and movements

Breeds patchily from France and the Netherlands east into Russia, with most birds in eastern Europe, and winters in Africa and around the Mediterranean. In the Netherlands it is a scarce breeder whose numbers spike in wet springs. In Spain it is mainly a migrant and rare breeder, with a few sites in the north and the Guadalquivir marshes.

• Breeding (summer)
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

In May or early June go out to a newly rewetted marsh between eleven at night and two in the morning and listen from a dyke or track. Do not use playback: birds respond hard and may desert a territory. By day, a muddy reed edge at low water in August is the only realistic chance of a sighting.

Conservation status

Scarce and heavily dependent on wet springs; Dutch numbers swing from a few dozen to a few hundred calling males. Drainage, water levels managed for farming and the succession of marsh into closed reed or scrub are the main pressures. New dynamic wetlands with natural water regimes produce territories almost immediately.