All species › Cranes, rails and allies › Rails and crakes › Black Rail
Black Rail | Laterallus jamaicensis
Zwarte dwergral | Polluela negra
The Black Rail is one of the smallest rails in the world and is rarely seen in the region. It lives in the densest, shallowest parts of marshes and wet grassland, calls mainly at night and almost never flies. The species was described in 1789 from a bird from Jamaica, which explains its scientific name, but it has rarely been recorded on the islands since.
Voice
The best-known call is a sharp, repeated kee-kee-durr, the last note lower, given mainly at night and in the early morning in the breeding season. Also a growling, grunting sound in territorial disputes and soft ticking notes.
Recording: Paul Lenrumé — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–15 cm, the size of a sparrow, round, with a short tail and a short black bill. The plumage is dark slate grey to blackish, the head slightly paler grey. The nape and upper back are rufous-brown. Back and wings have fine white speckles, the flanks and undertail are narrowly barred white. The eye is red in adults; juveniles have a brown eye that turns red within the first months. The legs are dark. The sexes are similar.
Confusion species
Yellow-breasted Crake Laterallus flaviventer is just as small, but has a buffy-yellow face and breast, a pale supercilium and yellow legs. Black downy chicks of other rails, such as Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus and Sora Porzana carolina, can look like a Black Rail in dense cover, but lack the white speckles and rufous nape. Zapata Rail Mustelirallus cerverai of Cuba is much larger, with a long greenish-yellow bill.
Habitat
Very shallow water or saturated ground with dense, fine grasses, sedges and rushes: the edges of fresh and brackish marshes, wet grassland and the higher parts of salt marshes, where the water is only a few centimetres deep. It eats small insects, spiders, snails and seeds. The nest is a loose cup of grass, covered by the surrounding vegetation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
A rare and very local resident in Cuba, the source of most recent records, and in Jamaica, where it has been recorded only a few times since its description. Only a few, partly old reports are known from Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Scattered records in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, possibly of winter visitors from North America. Outside the region locally in the United States, Mexico and Central America, and in separate populations in Peru, Chile and Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Almost only found by sound, on still nights in the breeding season. Even then the bird nearly always stays in cover; playing recordings disturbs the species and is undesirable for so threatened a rail. A brief glimpse of a small black bird running off like a mouse between the grass stems is often the most that can be hoped for.
Conservation status
Endangered. The world population is declining through the loss of shallow marshes and wet grassland to drainage and building, and on the coast through sea-level rise and storm surges that wash out nests. Very little is known about the Caribbean populations; targeted surveys are largely lacking.
Scientific name
Laterallus jamaicensis | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Rallus jamaicensis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Laterallus was introduced in 1855 by Gray. Laterallus is a contraction of Rallus lateralis, an old synonym of the Rufous-sided Crake; Latin lateralis 'of the side' refers to the coloured flanks. jamaicensis means 'of Jamaica', where the species was described. The specimen the first description was based on came from Jamaica.