All species › Cranes, rails and allies › Limpkin › Limpkin
Limpkin | Aramus guarauna
Koerlan | Carrao
The Limpkin is a large, dark brown marsh bird with long legs and a long, slightly curved bill, and the only species in its family. It lives almost entirely on large freshwater snails, which it extracts from the shell with the tip of the bill. In the Caribbean it is most noticeable for its wailing, far-carrying scream, heard at night and at dusk over marshes and rice fields. In Cuba it is called guareao, in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico carrao.
Voice
A loud, wailing, somewhat rattling scream, krr-eeeooow or kwee-aar, often repeated in series and audible from afar, especially at night and at dawn and dusk. Also short clucking and cackling calls.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
64–73 cm, about the size of a small heron but stockier, with a shorter neck and heavier legs. The plumage is dark olive-brown with a slight gloss; head, neck, mantle and wing coverts are densely streaked and spotted with white, most strongly on the neck. The bill is long, slightly decurved and yellowish with a dark tip; the tip is slightly twisted, which helps in opening snails. The legs are dark grey-green. The sexes are alike; the male is slightly larger. It walks with a jerky gait that can look like a limp. It flies with the neck outstretched and legs dangling, using short, stiff upstrokes.
Confusion species
Glossy Ibis Plegadis falcinellus has a more strongly curved, dark bill, is slimmer and smaller and lacks the white streaks; it also flies with faster beats, often in groups. Young Black-crowned Night Herons Nycticorax nycticorax and young Yellow-crowned Night Herons Nyctanassa violacea are also brown with white spots, but have a short, straight bill and large eyes and stand hunched with the neck drawn in.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes, flooded grassland, banks of rivers, canals and lakes, swamp forest and rice fields; locally also brackish lagoon edges. The presence of apple snails (Pomacea) largely determines where the species occurs. It feeds while walking in shallow water and among dense waterside plants. It builds a nest of plant material low in shrubs, on floating vegetation or in a tree by the water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident in Cuba (including the Isla de la Juventud), Hispaniola and Jamaica, and on part of the Bahamas. In Puerto Rico the species was already very rare in the first half of the twentieth century and then disappeared; since 2012 it has been seen there again, but the size of the present population is not well known. In Trinidad a resident of freshwater marshes; on Curaçao and Aruba only a few records. Beyond the region in Florida and south-eastern Georgia, Mexico, Central America and much of South America south to Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Cuba in the Zapata Swamp and in the rice fields and marshes of the lowlands, where birds also walk along ditch edges by day. The call is the best clue; the birds are most active at dusk. Heaps of empty apple snail shells along the water's edge give away a feeding site.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In the Caribbean the species is under local pressure from the draining of marshes, pesticide use in rice fields and hunting. In Puerto Rico it disappeared almost entirely; the recent records there point to a return, but it is unclear whether birds breed there again.
Scientific name
Aramus guarauna | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Scopolax Guarauna; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Aramus was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Aramus probably goes back to a Greek word for an unidentified waterbird; the exact origin is uncertain. guarauna is probably taken from Guarauna, the Tupi name Marcgrave recorded for this bird in Brazil. The specimen the first description was based on came from South America (not specified).