Inaccessible Island Rail

ID tip

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

When to see the Inaccessible Island Rail

One bar for each month. Filled bars are the 3 months with records; pale bars are months with none. The wide bar is February, the month with the most records.

Where to see the Inaccessible Island Rail

The map shades 1 country with regular records. Everything unshaded has no records. Countries are listed below the map.

About the Inaccessible Island Rail

The Inaccessible Island rail, or Inaccessible rail, is a small bird species of the rail family, Rallidae. Endemic to Inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago in the isolated south Atlantic, it is the smallest extant flightless bird in the world. The species was formally described by physician Percy Lowe in 1923 but had first come to the attention of scientists 50 years earlier. The Inaccessible Island rail's taxonomic affinities and origin were a long-standing mystery; in 2018 its closest relative was identified as the South American dot-winged crake, and it was decided that both species are best classified in the genus Laterallus.

Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Easily confused with

Speckled RailLaterallus notatusThe speckled rail is 13 to 14 cm (5.1 to 5.5 in) long and weighs about 30 g (1.1 oz). Galapagos CrakeLaterallus spilonotaThe Galapagos crake is about 15 cm (5.9 in) long and weighs about 35 to 45 g (1.2 to 1.6 oz). Rusty-flanked CrakeLaterallus levraudiThe rusty-flanked crake is 14 to 16.5 cm (5.5 to 6.5 in) long.