Endangered
Okinawa Rail
Hypotaenidia okinawae
Okinawa Rail is a medium-sized and almost flightless rail with short wings and tail, olive-brown upperparts, black underparts with white bars and a red bill and legs.
Appearance
The bill is large and bright red with a whitish tip. The upperparts are olive-brown while the underparts are black with narrow white bars. The face is black with a white spot between the bill and eye and a white line behind the eye, extending back to the side of the neck.
It is almost flightless and has very short wings and tail.
It is about 30 cm long with a wingspan of 50 cm and a weight of around 435 g.
Range and habitat
It is found only in Yanbaru, the northern part of Okinawa Island in the Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan, from where it gets its Japanese name. It has a total range of just 260 km2. It occurs from sea-level to the highest mountains at 498 m above sea-level.
It is endemic to Okinawa Island in Japan where it is known as the Yanbaru kuina (ヤンバルクイナ（山原水鶏）, "Yanbaru rail"). Yanbaru became a national park in 2016 and several forest sites have been bought by conservation organizations as nature reserves.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
It spends most of its time on the ground but usually roosts in trees, climbing up to sleep on a branch or sloping trunk. Pairs are monogamous and appear to mate for life.
The nest is built on the ground and made of leaves, grass and fern fronds.
In crisis
It is classified as an endangered species and is threatened by habitat loss and introduced predators. The species is classified as endangered by BirdLife International because of its small, declining population and restricted range. The total population was estimated at 1,800 birds in 1986.
It is threatened by the loss and fragmentation of its forest habitat due to logging, agriculture and the building of roads, dams and golf courses. Introduced predators such as cats, dogs and the small Asian mongoose probably have an impact while some birds are killed by vehicles on roads.
Okinawa Rail is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Okinawa Rail, Wikidata item Q28114050. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
