Grey-necked Wood-rail

Gray-necked Wood-rail Aramides cajanea

Brazilian name: saracura-três-potes

Pantanal, Mato Grosso, Brazil
December 2006

One of the larger Neotropical rails and the only Aramides with head and neck entirely grey.

Like all rails, it is shy and secretive but will venture out into the open if reasonably close to dense cover at the edge of mangroves or a swamp.

Very vocal especially at or before dawn. The Indians believed that part of this loud vocalisation was due to the bird farting or as Fernão Cardim more politely noted in the 16th century, "It has a strange song, for whoever hears it assumes it to be a very large bird although it is small, for it sings with its mouth while at the same time it makes another sonorous, intense, loud, but not very smelly tone with its rear end, which can be frightening." See Sick, Page 209.

There are illustrations in HBW, Volume 3, Page 113 (or is this a photo of a Giant Wood-rail - A. ypecaha - It has a rufous hind-neck) and Page 172; Hilty & Brown, Plate 7; and Sick, Plate 11

There are recordings and a distribution map on xeno-canto .

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