Who says hens are bird-brained?
By Nutan Shukla

IN the animal world, the female usually chooses a mate who is not only stronger than her but also stronger than the other males of the group. However in the case of moorhen, also known as common gallinules, the case is different. It is surprising that the females of these birds select males who are physically inferior to herself for mating.

According to experts the females of this monogamous bird play a very aggressive and dominant role and select small males as they need less food to keep healthy and can put on comparatively more fat. Such males can devote more time to incubation because they will need less time to feed. This enables the female to spare more time for laying more eggs at different places to make good the losses of eggs by predation which is very high in these birds as they are mainly ground-nesting birds.

Moorhens are prolific breeders and they usually raise two to three broods of six to ten chicks every season. Despite the fact that they handle such a large number of nestlings they take full care in raising them. In the beginning of the season the rate of predation is very high so to deal with it, moorhens resort to laying eggs repeatedly as well as ‘dump nesting’ (where more than one females have laid in the same nest). The chicks are very active and leave the nest within two to three days and are soon able to swim and dive. In moorhens, not only do both parents share the duty of incubation and feeding the young, but the elder siblings (young of an earlier brood), too feed their young brothers and sisters..

The moorhen is the most common of all the gallinules and is found on every continent, except the southern Pacific islands and Australia. It is often found in the same areas as coots but it is slightly smaller than it and is also easily distinguished from the coot because of the bright red frontal shield. Apart from this, its under-tail is white which is flashed by the bird during courtship displays.

Rails who are also members of the same family, Rallidae, as moorhens, include species which have become rare in last few decades. For instance, guam rail is an extremely rare bird. Among the eight of the world’s total number of species of rails which are threatened, guam rail is the only species whose entire population (mere 33 birds in 1986) is confined to captivity.

Decline in their number on such a large scale is attributed to the Australian brown tree snake and the rat snake of Philippines which were introduced to Guam during the World War II. Reptiles preyed mainly on these birds and their eggs, which were laid either on the ground or in a low bush. Other factors which played a significant role in pushing the bird to the verge of extinction were disappearing marshlands, human disturbances and introduced competitive domestic or predatory animals.

The bird is named after the place where it is found. Guam is situated in pacific lying in-between Japan and New Guinea. It is a territory of USA.

Inaccessible Island rail is the smallest flightless bird in the world. Found on the remote Inaccessible Island, in South Atlantic, this bird measures 12.5 cm and weighs about 35 gms only. In appearance, this flightless bird is no larger than a newly-hatched chicken and spends most of its time in burrows or among the tussock grass which is found in abundance on the island.

Restricted to New Zealand is another species named takahe which is also an extremely rare flightless bird. It is also the biggest and the heaviest of all members of the rail family. Weighing 3.5kg takahe is a very colourful bird with a frontal shield and a broad red bill.

For some time it was lost to the civilized world, but was rediscovered in the mountainous terrain of New Zealand’s South Island in the year 1948. Prior to this it was last seen in the year 1898, and was thought to have been extinct.

Other members of the family are coots. The horned coot a rare bird confined to lakes high in the Andes mountains of South America, have a muscular wattle on the forehead while the other species have yellow, red to white patch, called frontal shield, making the bird look as though it is going bald. The expression "bald as coot" used to describe bald people is taken from these birds.