FIELD CHARACTERS: A familiar slaty grey, stub-tailed, skulking marsh bird with prominent white face, supercilia, throat, breast and middle of abdomen, and rusty red under the tail. Sexes alike. Singly, about thickets on waterlogged ground. Resident. Fairly common. Chiefly low country but upto at least 3000 ft. (c. 900 m.) – Periyar Lake environs. Affects Pandanus brakes and marginal vegetation in swamps and inundated paddy fields. Also the neighbourhood of homestead along the coastal backwaters.Distribution Outside Kerala is in Ceylon and peninsular India north to about lat. 20 0 N. North India , Assam and Burma are inhabited by the race chinensis.
SIZE: About that of the Partridge
Other races extend the species to Malaysia , southern China , the Philippines and Formosa .. Silent except during the monsoon months when breeding, when it becomes particularly noisy. Its food consisit of insects, worms, molluscs, grain and shoots of paddy and marsh plants. Eggs – 6 o r 7, cream or pinkish white streaked and blotched with reddish brown. Average SIZE 39.5X30.0mm
