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Spotted Rail | Pardirallus maculatus
Gevlekte ral | Rascón pinto | Saracura-carijó
The Spotted Rail is a medium-sized rail with black-and-white spotted and barred plumage. It lives in freshwater marshes with dense vegetation and usually stays hidden. In the guide area it is local and irregular in occurrence, and birds wander outside the breeding season.
Voice
A series of deep, grunting notes, often accelerating, and a high, shrill scream; calls mainly at dusk and at night.
Recording: José Menéndez — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
25–28 cm, with a long, slightly decurved bill. The head, neck and breast are blackish with dense white spots; the back and wings brown with white streaks; the flanks and belly barred black and white; the undertail coverts white. The bill is greenish yellow with a red spot at the base, and the iris and legs are red. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are duller and browner, with fewer spots.
Confusion species
Blackish Rail Pardirallus nigricans and Plumbeous Rail Pardirallus sanguinolentus lack any spotting and are plain grey and olive-brown. Virginia Rail Rallus limicola is smaller, with a rufous breast and grey cheeks. Grey-cowled Wood Rail Aramides cajaneus is larger, with a grey neck and a rufous breast.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes with dense, reed-like vegetation, wet grassland, rice fields and overgrown ditches, mainly in the lowlands; along the Peruvian coast also in coastal marshes. It searches mud and shallow water for insects, worms, small fish and seeds. The nest is a cup of plant material in dense vegetation, just above the water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia scattered in the northern lowlands and the large valleys. In Ecuador rare and local in the west. In Peru locally in coastal marshes and rarely in the Amazonian lowlands. In Bolivia in the eastern lowlands. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area from Mexico and the Caribbean to northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search at dusk along the edges of marshes and rice fields in northern Colombia and in the coastal marshes of Peru; the bird sometimes walks briefly onto open mud at the edge of the vegetation.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Habitat is lost locally through marsh drainage, but the species also uses rice fields.
Scientific name
Pardirallus maculatus | (Boddaert, 1783)
Boddaert described the species in 1783 as Rallus maculatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pardirallus was introduced in 1856 by Bonaparte. The genus name combines Greek pardos, 'leopard', with the genus Rallus. The species name is Latin maculatus, 'spotted'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.