Photograph of a bird, sent by a globe-trotting relative who has recently been around the Seychelles Islands. On the back she has written that this is a bird which can hardly fly and, at some stage of evolution, avian scientists believe, will lose the power of flight to become the last flightless bird in the Indian Ocean. It is a relative of a bird found in many parts of this country but seldom seen - the water rail or rallus aquaticus. And is not the corncrake also referred to as the land rail; for although the Latin for corncrake is crex crex and not rallus, they are put together in bird books. Indeed while the water rail is, in French rale aquatique, the corncrake is rale des genets (broom or genista).
Diversion. Back to the Seychelles. Although a handbook describes this White Throated Rail of Aldabra as possibly the last flightless bird of the Indian Ocean, it is not entirely so; it can fly a bit, but seldom does. Our friend was able to get right up to a young bird as it rooted among the vegetation, not two feet away. The rail, says a handbook, is one of the world's most widespread bird families, rarely flying unless forced to do so. But don't some come to winter in Ireland?
"Prime candidates for evolution into flightless birds .. . very curious and will emerge from bushes to investigate any strange noise ... will approach to within inches .. . calls extremely loud: clicks, booming sounds and long-drawn-out wails .. ." This information is from Aldabra, World Heritage Site, by Adrian Skerrett and others, published by Seychelles Islands Foundation 1998.
Our own water rail is far more discreet, not often seen, or seen in rear view as it dashes into cover. If you don't often see it you may, if you live near marshy ground or near a river or lake with good reed-beds, hear it occasionally. It seems to be very vocal, this water rail, for one book has it "uttering various clucking, grunting and miaouing notes, a singular loud, harsh call beginning as a grunt and ending as a squeal". And all this from a bird described as "like a small moorhen". In Dempsey's and O'Cleary's Guide to Ireland's Birds, it is said also to emit squealing, pig-like calls. The corncrake, its cousin, seems modest of voice by comparison.