The African crake is a small to medium-size ground-living bird in the rail family. It has a stubby red bill, red eyes, and a white line from the bill to above the eye. The crake can be found in central to southern Africa, but is a partial migrant.
About African crake in brief
The African crake is a small to medium-size ground-living bird in the rail family. It is seasonally common in most of its range other than the rainforests and areas that have low annual rainfall. It has a stubby red bill, red eyes, and a white line from the bill to above the eye. This species nests in a wide variety of grassland types, and agricultural land with tall crops may also be used. It feeds on a wide range of invertebrates, along with some small frogs and fish, and plant material, especially grass seeds. It may itself be eaten by large birds of prey; snakes; or mammals, including humans, and can host parasites. It was first described as Ortygometra egregia by Wilhelm Peters in 1854 from a specimen collected in Mozambique, but the genus name failed to become established. For some time it was placed as the sole member of the genus Crecopsis but subsequently moved to Crex, created for this species by German naturalist and ornithologist Johann Matthäus Bechstein in 1803. Later authors sometimes placed it in Porzana, based on a resemblance to the ash-throated crake, P. albicollis. There are no sub-specific variations in geographical appearance of this crake. This crake has a range of calls, the most characteristic being a series of rapid grating krrr notes. The 3–11 eggs start hatching after about 14 days, and the black, downy precocial chicks fledge after four to five weeks.
Immature birds have darker upperparts and duller upperparts than the adult, with a less contrasting head pattern. The sexes are similar in appearance, although the female is slightly smaller and dulling than the male, with blackish upperparts streaked with olive-brown apart from the hindneck, which are plain pale brown. The sides of the foreneck, throat and breast are bluish-grey, the flight feathers are dark and the belly and belly are black and white. The eye is red, the bill is reddish, the belly is black and the legs and feet are light or grey, and there is a white streak from the base of the head to the eye on the underside of the bill. The species name egregia derives from Latin egregius, “outstanding, prominent” and the Ancient Greek opsis, “appearance” The crake can be found in central to southern Africa, but is a partial migrant, moving away from the equator as soon as the rains provide sufficient grass cover to allow it to breed elsewhere. The closest relative is the corn crake which breeds in Europe and Asia, but winters in Africa. The crakes are the closest relatives of the genera Crecops and Crex. The genus name Crex is derived from Crex and Ancient Greek Opsis, which means “to appear”
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This page is based on the article African crake published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
