Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes March 18 2009

You won't see it but you may well hear it. And that you won't forget.

This odd little bird of the reedbeds makes a noise like a pig. It squeals and then grunts. The noise is called "sharming".

The agonised death-knell of a rat or rabbit when hunted by a stoat is another song it can sing, not to speak of the call of a long-eared owl.

None of these are imitations, for the bird is doing its own particular thing. But if you really want to see this slender little crake, which can stand tall and make its diminutive self look like a wine bottle, then you will have to be as cunning as a fox.

I generally get a brief glimpse around the edges of reedbeds, bogs, very wet meadows and overgrown streams like this little marsh in the Arun valley at Waltham Brooks next to Greatham bridge.

This is a Sussex Wildlife Trust reserve and the water rail might also be seen at their headquarters at Woods Mill.

They live in the kind of habitat which moorhens like and that is where you just might possibly see one among those much bigger birds.

But it will suddenly spring a surprise. One spent its winter in a flower bed around the Brighton Pavilion, another in a nettle patch on the downs near Brighton.

I have found three dead water rails over the years hit by cars on the road through Singleton, outside the Weald and Downland Museum. I imagine these three unfortunates had been following the course of the Lavant as they migrated through the county.

They go south in autumn to the continent and return about now to breed in Denmark and the west coast of Norway. But these lovely little birds don't like the cold so I am hoping this winter's freeze-up did not devastate the dozen or so which breed in Sussex.

Back in early Victorian days, water rail eggs were often collected for the table, it is recorded. I sometimes wonder if people knew the difference from moorhens' eggs, which were also very much part of the diet.

This bird is today amber listed, with moderate conservation concern, with only about 500 pairs breeding in Britain.