Watercock   Gallicrex cinerea

Etymology:

• Gallicrex : Genus Gallus- fowl; Genus Crex- crake
• Cinerea :Latin word cinis, cineris – ashes { Ashy grey}

Vernacular Names:  Hindi: Kora, Kangra, Bi: Toobka, Kora, Ben: Kora, Jal morag, Ass: Kora sorai, Mani: Utum, Guj: Kora, Jal murgho, Ta: Tannir kozhi, Te: Neeti kodi, Mal: Theepporikkannan, Sinh: Wil kukkula, Mald: Cooli kukula, Mar: Pankombadi

Distribution in India: Resident in various parts of India and summer visitor in North India

Description: Size of male is 42–43 cm; wt. of male is 300–650 g; size of female is 36 cm, wt. of female is 200–434 g; wingspan is 68–86 cm. It is a large moorhen-like rail with slimmer, long-necked appearance. The male is black with upperpart feathers fringed grey and usually brown, giving scaled appearance. The undertail-coverts are barred black and buff; bill is yellow. The iris, base of upper mandible, frontal shield, horn, legs and feet are bright red. The female is markedly smaller; darkish brown above with buff-brown scalloping, rufous buff below with fine wavy dark barring. The non-breeding male is like the female. The immature and juvenile are like adult female, but juvenile is tawnier overall and less barred below.

Habitat: It is found in reedy or grassy swamps, flooded pasture, rice fields, irrigated sugar cane, and rush-bordered channels, rivers, ponds and ditches and sometimes brackish swamps.

Food habits: It eats seeds and shoots of “green crops”, and wild and cultivated rice, worms, molluscs, aquatic insects and their larvae, and grasshoppers. It swims well and crosses open water. It is very skulking and largely crepuscular and emerges to feed in overcast and rainy weather also.

Breeding habits: Breeds in Jun- Sept in India and Pakistan, May and Jan-Feb in Sri Lanka, Jun-Jul in Maldives, Philippines and Dec in Sumatra. The nest is a large concave or deep cup-shaped pad of sedges, rushes, rice blades , grass, built low down in reeds or rice, or on clump of coarse grass; stems and seed heads turned down to form platform on which more material is added and sometimes domed over to form bower. They lay a clutch of 3–6 eggs. The incubation period is 24 days. They normally rear 2 broods in a year.