Water rail

Voice

The famous sharming: a burst of grunting notes running into shrill wailing squeals, exactly like a piglet being seized, krrooee-krrooee-krooo-eee, slowly dying away. There is also a rhythmic pumping kipp kipp kipp used as territorial song in spring. Heard mainly at dusk and through the night, all year including midwinter; a slammed car door often triggers an instant answer.

Identification

Slim, laterally flattened body, olive-brown with black streaks above and slate-blue on face, neck and breast. The flanks are barred black and white, the undertail is creamy and flicked up as it walks. Decisive is the long, slightly down-curved, orange-red bill. Often all you see is that bill and a piece of grey breast between the reeds.

Confusion species

Every other crake has a short bill; the long red bill is unique and settles any record. Spotted Crake is smaller, browner and white-spotted. A juvenile Water Rail is browner on the breast with a pale throat and can suggest Spotted Crake, but always has the long bill and unspotted underparts.

Habitat

Dense, permanently wet reedbed, sedge marsh, silting ditches with reed sweet-grass, flooded alder carr and overgrown pond margins. It needs shallow water with heavy cover and soft mud to feed in. In hard winters birds move to springs, flowing ditches and even town parks, where they suddenly become visible in the open.

Range and movements

Breeds across nearly all of Europe, from Ireland to the Urals, partly resident and partly migratory. In the Netherlands it is a common but under-recorded breeder of all larger marshes, joined in winter by birds from the north-east. In Spain it breeds scattered in fresh and brackish marshes, and the south holds substantial numbers of European birds in winter.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Go to a reed marsh at dusk in March or April and wait on a track beside open water. Winter is surprisingly the best time to see one: in frost they walk in full view at open patches and under footbridges. Otherwise sit still at a muddy reed edge and let the bird come out by itself.

Conservation status

Common nationally and not threatened, though hard winters kill locally. Drying out, mowing and flailing of reed fringes, rigid water levels and the conversion of marsh to commercial reed all reduce habitat quality. Large new wetlands with natural level dynamics, by contrast, deliver high densities almost at once.