Water Hen

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.