page_title: Water rail
section_title: Subspecies
hierarchical_section_title: Water rail / Description / Subspecies
caption_attribution_description: Rallus aquaticus korejewi
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: There are three recognised subspecies.
  R. a. aquaticus (Linnaeus, 1758). This is the nominate subspecies that breeds in Europe, North Africa, Turkey, western Asia to the Caspian Sea and western Kazakhstan, and in a narrow band east to central Siberia.
  R. a. hibernans (Salomonsen, 1931). The Icelandic race, which has slightly warmer brown upperparts than the nominate form. The bars of the flanks are dark brown, not black, and the bill is somewhat shorter; the grey of the underparts may have a brown tinge.
  R. a. korejewi (Zarudny, 1905) (includes the dubious forms deserticolor, tsaidamensis and arjanicus). This subspecies breeds in south central Asia from southern and eastern Iran east to Eastern China (Sometimes in Beijing, Shanghai etc.), and in the Indian subcontinent in Kashmir and Ladakh. It is slightly larger than the nominate race, with paler brown upperparts and slightly paler slate underparts. It has a weak brown stripe through the eye.
  The differences between the three other races appear to be clinal, and it is possible that they should all be merged into R. a. aquaticus.
caption: R. a. korejewi
exif: {}