Strange place for a Water Rail

Jennie · #1 (**permalink**) 24-02-2010, 09:18 PM

Geoff, one of my work colleagues has thought for the past month or so that he had a moorhen in his suburban garden, but wasn't sure as it moved too quickly for him to properly identify.
Yesterday his wife took these pics from their bedroom window, Geoff was shocked to discover that the bird is a Water Rail!
The garden is not large, has a pond with fish, and backs onto a field with houses on three sides and a road leading to a railway station on the fourth.
The field is not boggy or particularly overgrown. There is a river about a third of a mile away.

What Geoff would like to know is what made the bird come into his garden, and why has it stayed?

Madonplants · #2 (**permalink**) 24-02-2010, 09:41 PM

Wasn't Water Rail one of the birds mentioned on the Snow watch programme coming into people's gardens to feed, due to the freezing conditions?

RKB · #3 (**permalink**) 24-02-2010, 09:43 PM

It's not unknown for them to hang around bird tables and gardens in bad winters. They're not just after birdfood - they'll also kill and eat the other birds attracted to the garden. They'll take things up to the size of Dunnock or Chaffinch.

darrenm · #4 (**permalink**) 25-02-2010, 08:11 AM

family friends on the Lincolnshire Wolds in the 90's used to feed one cat meat from the tin and it would wait at the door ready to be fed each morning and then wander off to the stream that ran past their place and disappear for the rest of the day, they nicknamed it 'Walter'. It turned up three winters in a row and was a very easy New Years year tick when i was into listing. Saw one a few weeks back eating the remains of an Herring Gull which was on the ice of a local pond.