Gallicrex cinerea (J.F. Gmelin, 1789)

Seen in Adi annamalai, it is a swamp bird with both sexes looking alike in the non-breeding season. It is dark brown above with broad fulvous curves along the edges. Below, it is pale buff brown with fine wavy darker bars. It has a small triangular yellowish homy shield on the forehead. The female is much smaller. A breeding male looks black overall and is scalloped with grey. It has a striking red fleshy horn projecting above the crown, and bright red eyes and legs. This bird is seen in reedy swamps, low-lying rice and sugar-cane fields, and msh-bordered water bodies or channels. Largely crepuscular, it moves around with a jerking of its tail, rarely strays far and moves quickly to cover on the least alarm. Its flight is feeble with rapid flaps, its long legs dangling below. Males are belligerent during breeding season, indulging in furious and long- sustained battles, jumping and clawing at rivals, trying to get hold of the opponent’s neck in its bill but doing little damage beyond scratches and loss of some neck feathers. This bird is largely vegetarian, feeding on seeds and shoot of green crops and wild and cultivated rice (where it may do some damage). It may also eat aquatic insects and their larvae and molluscs and worms. Its call is a series of 10 to 12 kok-kok-kok (like the booming notes of the Chestnut Bittern) uttered with head up, followed suddenly by 10 to 12 deeper, hollower, metallic utumb-utumb-utumb (like a pebble dropped into a deep well) with head lowered. Immediately it utters 5 to 6 kluck-kluck-kluck notes with its head raised again. After a few seconds’ silence it begins the series again and can go on for half an hour or more at a stretch. Breeding is chiefly in the monsoon months. The nest, (with 3 to 6 eggs), made of mshes, grasses etc, is cup-shaped and is made in tangled reed-beds in swamps or among rice plants in an inundated field.

Being resident population they breed with respect to local weather season, they nest usually during or just after the wet season. The nest is built on the ground using plant material as platform, hidden among reeds and long grasses. Clutch contains 3 to 6 eggs.

They are mainly mostly resident. The northern population of watercock population in Korea, Japan, and China move to southern parts during winter.

Male is 43cm, Female is 36 cm.

They probe with the help of bill in mud or shallow water, also picking up food by sight. They are usually quite and secretive, but are sometimes seen out in the open. They are noisy birds, especially at dawn and dusk, with a loud, gulping call. They are crepuscular, during day time they are not active and emerging to feed in the early morning and evening, or in drizzy weather or cloudy. Their flight is feeble and rapid flap and dangling below their long legs. Males becomes highly pugnacious during breeding season indulging in furious and long sustained fight, jumping and clawing at each other.

Carnivore ( small fish, aquatic insects, water beetles and worms, invertebrates, molluscs) and also feeds on plant matters like seeds, grass, shoots and berries.

Affects reedy swamps, low lying waterlogged paddy and other fields, ditches, ponds, canals and channels with emergent vegetation.

They are dependent on marshes, flooded fields, canals, ponds and ditches with emergent vegetation.

Decreasing

IUCN Redlist Status: Least Concern

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)

Habitat loss, the cutting and burning of reed bed and expanding agricultural activities, the reclamation of wetlands are the main threats faced by these species.

Schedule IV