Guia Vorstmandas aves dos Andes e da Costa Oeste

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Cranes, rails and allies | Gruiformes

Kraanvogelachtigen | Cranes, rails and allies | Grullas y rálidos

Rails, the Limpkin, the trumpeters and the Sungrebe look very unlike one another; together with the cranes, which are absent from this region, they are placed together mainly on molecular data and on features of the skeleton. What most of them share is a life on the ground in marsh, reedbed, shoreline and wet grassland, or in the trumpeters on the floor of Amazonian forest: long legs with long unwebbed toes that spread the weight over soft mud and floating vegetation, a small, high-set hind toe, broad rounded wings and a short tail. Many rails moult all their flight feathers at once and are then flightless for some weeks. The nest is on the ground or on a platform in the vegetation; the young hatch downy and open-eyed, leave the nest within a few days and are still fed by the parents at first. In the Andes and on the Galápagos some of the rails live far from the tropical lowlands: the Andean Coot and the Giant Coot on high lakes of the puna, where adult Giant Coots are too heavy to fly, and the Galápagos Rail in the humid highlands of the islands.

Famílias desta ordem

  • Trumpeters | Psophiidae2 espéciesTwo species occur in this guide, both in the genus Psophia and both in the rainforest of the Amazonian lowlands at the eastern foot of the Andes: the Grey-winged Trumpeter north of the Amazon in Colombia, Ecuador and northern Peru, the Pale-winged Trumpeter south of it in Peru and Bolivia. Large rivers form the boundaries between species and subspecies, and the number of species recognised differs between classifications. Trumpeters are chicken-sized ground birds with a hunched back, a long neck, long legs and a short, fowl-like bill. The plumage is largely velvety black with a purple or green sheen, and the loose, hair-like feathers of the inner flight feathers form a pale patch on the back, white or grey depending on the species. They live in groups in tall, undisturbed forest, where they eat fallen fruit, often beneath trees in which monkeys are feeding, as well as insects and other small animals. A group defends a territory together and the young are fed by several group members. The name refers to the deep, humming and trumpeting calls. The nest is in a tree cavity. Because of hunting, trumpeters quickly disappear from forest around settlements.
  • Limpkin | Aramidae1 espécieA family of a single species, the Limpkin, found in the region mainly in the lowlands, in western Colombia and Ecuador and in the Amazonian lowlands east of the Andes, in freshwater marshes, flooded forest, riverbanks and mangroves. It is a large, long-legged bird intermediate in build between cranes and rails, dark brown with white streaks on the head, neck and mantle. The long, slightly decurved bill is laterally compressed, and near the tip the mandibles do not quite meet and the lower one is slightly twisted; with it the bird extracts apple snails from their shells without breaking them. These snails are the staple food, supplemented by freshwater mussels, crayfish, worms and insects. It walks with a rather limping gait through shallow water and flies with slow, jerky wingbeats and dangling legs. The voice is a loud, wailing, repeated scream that carries far across the marsh, especially at dusk and at night. The nest is a platform of plant material in dense vegetation just above the water or in a shrub, usually holding four to seven spotted eggs; the young leave the nest soon after hatching.
  • Finfoots | Heliornithidae1 espécieA small family of three species, each on a different continent: the African Finfoot (Podica), the Asian Masked Finfoot and the American Sungrebe. In the area of this guide only the Sungrebe occurs, mainly in the Amazonian lowlands at the eastern foot of the Andes and locally in the lowlands to the west. Finfoots look like a cross between a grebe and a cormorant, with an elongated body, a long, thin neck and a pointed, straight bill, yet they belong with the cranes and rails. The Sungrebe is the smallest of the three, with a black-and-white striped head. The toes carry broad lobes instead of webs and, like the legs, are boldly banded black and yellow. It is a shy bird of quiet, shaded rivers, streams, lagoons and oxbow lakes with overhanging bank vegetation. It swims low in the water with a nodding head, close along the bank, and when disturbed slips away under the vegetation or flies off low over the water. It eats aquatic insects, crustaceans, frogs and small fish, taken from the surface, from branches or on the bank. The nest is a platform of twigs and reeds on a branch above the water. In the Sungrebe the male carries the young, soon after hatching, in skin pockets beneath the wings.
  • Rails, gallinules and coots | Rallidae36 espéciesThe body is flattened from side to side, so the bird can squeeze between dense reed and sedge; the toes are strikingly long, and lobed in the swimming species. This guide covers 37 species in thirteen genera, from the mangroves and marshes of the coast and the forest streams of the Amazonian lowlands to the reedbeds of high Andean lakes, where coots dominate the open water. The wings are short and rounded: over short distances they fly with a whirring beat and dangling legs, though some species migrate long distances by night. The short tail is flicked up as they walk, showing the often pale undertail, and the bill ranges from short and conical to long and slender according to the food taken. The nest is a cup of stems and leaves hidden above shallow water; clutches are large, and the black downy chicks follow their parents within a day and are fed bill to bill.