White breasted water hen is greyish black bird with white
face, throat, breast and part of abdomen.
It is has a very short tail. The body
part under the tail is brownish red. The
bird usually lives in the marshy areas.
It is generally silent except in rainy season, the breeding season, it
becomes noisy. During breeding season it
is crepescular in activity. It makes
loud noise; the repetitive croaking calls are something between the quack of
duck and a newborn’s cry.
It mostly feeds on insects and worms and shoots of paddy and
marsh plants. This bird is mostly seen
in Asian countries Pakistan, Maldives India, Srilanka China and Indonesia.
The pictures of this bird are taken from my neighbouring
miniforest (open plot covered with wild trees and bushes). The area is marshy in rainy season. During this season I regularly hear the
noises these birds make. In the
beginning I would wonder some newborn is crying nonstop. Soon I realized that it was some birds. These birds are rarely seen outside the
bushes. Twice I have seen young birds flying on to low branches but disappeared
immediately. They are uniformly greyish
black with yellow beak. This is the
first time I spotted the adult birds and could take pictures and a short
video. I had to search the net for
identification of this bird.
Though I hear it regularly in the rainy season, only this
season I could see the bird and was happy to know about it.
