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Yellow-breasted Crake | Laterallus flaviventer
Geelbuikporseleinhoen | Polluela pecho amarillo
The Yellow-breasted Crake is one of the smallest rails in the world, a pale dwarf of floating vegetation and marsh edges. Unlike most small crakes it sometimes shows itself in the open, walking over water hyacinth or a floating mat of plants. In the guide area it occurs patchily and locally from Mexico to Panama.
Voice
A high, shrill, somewhat plaintive kreee or chirr, often repeated; also a short, dry rattle and soft ticking notes. Calls mainly in the early morning and the evening.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–14 cm, tiny, with a short tail and a short, dark bill. The crown and a stripe through the eye are dark, above them a striking white supercilium. Face, sides of the neck and breast are ochre-yellow to pale buff, the throat white. The upperparts are brown, with black and white streaks and spots on the back and wings. The flanks and undertail are barred black and white. The legs are strikingly yellow. Male and female are alike. Flies short distances with rapid wingbeats and dangling legs.
Confusion species
Grey-breasted Crake Laterallus exilis is slightly larger, with a grey head and breast, a chestnut nape and a greenish bill, and lacks the supercilium. Black Rail Laterallus jamaicensis is dark slate-grey with a rufous nape and dark legs. Sora Porzana carolina is much larger, with a thick yellow bill and a black face. Young Soras are ochre-brown but lack the white supercilium and the yellow legs.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes with floating plants such as water hyacinth and water lilies, edges of lakes, lagoons and slow rivers, flooded grasslands and rice fields; from sea level to about 1000 m, mostly lower. Clambers nimbly through vegetation and walks over floating leaves. Feeds on insects, small snails and seeds. The nest is a domed structure of plant material, low in dense rushes or grass above the water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In Mexico scarce and very local: along the Gulf coast in Veracruz and Tabasco and on the Pacific side in Nayarit. Further local in Belize, in Petén and Izabal in Guatemala, around Lake Yojoa and in the lowlands of Cortés in Honduras, and rare in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Costa Rica mainly in the northern lowlands, for example around Caño Negro, and locally on the Pacific side; in Panama mainly in the Canal Zone and in Bocas del Toro. Outside the guide area in the Greater Antilles and in large parts of South America east of the Andes.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The marshes around Caño Negro in northern Costa Rica and the shores of Gatún Lake near Gamboa in Panama are well-known sites. In the early morning the bird sometimes walks over floating plants at the edge of open water; waiting quietly at an edge with water hyacinth gives the best chance.
Conservation status
Not threatened; the species has a large range in Central and South America. In the guide area it is scarce and local and sensitive to the draining of marshes and the loss of floating vegetation.
Scientific name
Laterallus flaviventer | (Boddaert, 1783) (GBIF: Porzana flaviventer)
Boddaert described the species in 1783 as Rallus flaviventer; 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. flaviventer is Latin, from flavus 'yellow' and venter 'belly', after the yellowish underparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.