Baillon's Crake

Baillon's crake is a small rail, 15–18 centimetres long and similar to the little crake. It has a short, straight bill, yellow or green without a red base. Adults have mainly ochre-brown upperparts occasionally streaked with black and white, light blue-grey underparts that are paler on the throat, breast and abdomen, barred black-and-white flanks and under-tail, and olive-green legs with long toes. Immatures resemble adults but have extensively barred, duller underparts, and the chicks are black, as with all rails. (Wikipedia, general species account)

The breeding habitat is sedge beds and swamps, ranging from Eastern Europe to Honshu in Japan, and the species is also found in Africa, Australasia and Borneo as separate subspecies. Nests are placed in dry locations in wet sedge bogs, with four to eight eggs. It once bred in Great Britain up to the mid-nineteenth century, and the Hungarian population declined in the twentieth century with wetland drainage; there has been some recovery in northwestern Europe in recent years. (Wikipedia, general species account)