The Inaccessible Island Rail

Sounds made up, right? You’ve probably never heard of this bird!

Birds are very well known for their weird and funny names. Take, the sad fly catcher or the flying-steamer duck or even the secretary bird. For someone, who has been studying birds for a while now and been an admirer of birds for even longer, you’d expect that I’d not be surprised at hearing weird names of birds or their behaviors. However, that is not true at all.

About a few months ago, during the NDSU Bird Club, the president of NDSU bird club mentioned a certain bird, which I for sure thought was a made up bird and didn’t pay much attention, until a few days ago when I saw a research paper on that bird. I hope you’re ready to get as surprised as I was when I heard about this bird…..

Ok…drum-rolls…🥁🥁🥁

3….2…..1

The name of the bird “Inaccessible Island Rail”(IIRA)

For those who are thinking this is a made up bird, here is the birds of the world link to this bird:

https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/inirai1/cur/introduction

Photo: The Inaccessible Island Rail - Photo cortusey - Brain Gratwicke

Yes, the Inaccessible Island Rail (Laterallus rogersi). Interestingly, the IIRA is the smallest (extant) non flying bird in the world. At times I wonder how, throughout my few years of career as an ornithologist, I had never heard about this bird, but again, there are so many things you don’t know in the world. Anyways, this bird is about 13–15.5 cm and weighs 34–49 g (Taylor, 1996). IIRA is listed as a vulnerable species under IUCN listing. I suppose you already know that this bird is endemic to the ‘Inaccessible Island’ which is situated in the south Atlantic ocean. Basically in the middle of nowhere.

Location: Inaccessible Island

One of the studies from 2019 suggests that the origin of the Inaccessible-island rail is from South Americas. So basically, it was a flight bird or a bird that can fly… wait… it's there a word for birds that can fly in relation to birds that can’t that are called flightless birds? Or they’re just called birds…anyways, I think my favorite new bird is the Inaccessible Island Rail. I would love to go see it but I don’t know if the Island is accessible considering its name.

Diving deep:

There’s only been 10 observations on eBird with 4 photos.

Link to eBird: https://ebird.org/species/inirai1

Photo:

P.S. I am planning to dive deeper to find more stuff about this bird. Possibly do a video or another post about this bird soon! And, if you enjoyed this post, please share and also like and help me promote my substack!

Keep birding!

-The Bird Guy