page_title: Water rail
section_title: Feeding
hierarchical_section_title: Water rail / Behaviour / Feeding
caption_attribution_description: Parkgate Marsh, Cheshire, UK
context_page_description: The water rail is a bird of the rail family which breeds in well-vegetated wetlands across Europe, Asia and North Africa. Northern and eastern populations are migratory, but this species is a permanent resident in the warmer parts of its breeding range. The adult is 23–28 cm long, and, like other rails, has a body that is flattened laterally, allowing it easier passage through the reed beds it inhabits. It has mainly brown upperparts and blue-grey underparts, black barring on the flanks, long toes, a short tail and a long reddish bill. Immature birds are generally similar in appearance to the adults, but the blue-grey in the plumage is replaced by buff. The downy chicks are black, as with all rails. The former subspecies R. indicus, has distinctive markings and a call that is very different from the pig-like squeal of the western races, and is now usually split as a separate species, the brown-cheeked rail.
  The water rail breeds in reed beds and other marshy sites with tall, dense vegetation, building its nest a little above the water level from whatever plants are available nearby.
context_section_description: Water rails are omnivorous, although they mainly feed on animals. These include leeches, worms, gastropods, small crustaceans, spiders, and a wide range of both terrestrial and aquatic insects and their larvae. Small vertebrates such as amphibians, fish, birds and mammals may be killed or eaten as carrion. Vertebrates are impaled with a strike of the bill which breaks the prey's spinal cord. Plant food, which is consumed more in autumn and winter, includes the buds, flowers, shoots and seeds of water plants, berries and fruit. In south Asia, paddy (harvested rice kernels) may sometimes be eaten. The young rails are fed mainly on insects and spiders. Food obtained on land or from mud is normally washed in water before it is eaten. After rain, rails may probe soft ground for earthworms. This species will occasionally feed in the open even when not forced to do so by cold weather; Edmund Meade-Waldo described seven rails feeding in an open meadow. Despite its skulking nature, the water rail appears to thrive in captivity when fed on animal food such as raw meat or earthworms; one individual was taught to jump for worms suspended from a fishing rod.
  Water rails follow definite routes when feeding, frequently returning to good hunting areas. These rails are versatile and opportunist foragers. They will jump to take insects from plants, climb to find berries, or dislodge apples from trees so they can be eaten on the ground. They will kill birds by impaling or drowning them, particularly if the bird's ability to escape is restricted. They have been recorded as killing a European greenfinch and a king quail in an aviary, and small birds trapped in bird ringers' mist nets. One bird killed a twite caught with it in a Heligoland trap. They are also nest predators, particularly of small birds that nest in reeds such as the great reed warbler. Water rails may defend a winter feeding territory, although this is smaller than when breeding, with individuals perhaps less than 10 m (11 yd) apart; favoured sites may hold hundreds of birds. Aggressive behaviour outside the breeding season may extend to attacks on other marsh rails such as spotted and Baillon's crake.
caption: The marshes at Parkgate, Cheshire may hold hundreds of water rails in winter.[43]
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