Critically Endangered
Samoan Wood Rail
Gallinula pacifica
The Samoan moorhen, also known as the Samoan woodhen and Samoan wood rail, is a nearly flightless rail endemic to the Samoan island of Savai'i that is Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The plumage was darkish blue on head, neck and breast contrasted with an entirely black rump and tail. The upperparts were dark olivaceous with a greenish sheen. The bill and the frontal shield were yellowish to orange red.
This small gallinule had a length of about 25 cm.
Range and habitat
The Samoan moorhen, also known as the Samoan woodhen and Samoan wood rail, is a nearly flightless rail endemic to the Samoan island of Savai'i that is Critically Endangered. It was known as puna'e ("one that jumps up") to the native Samoans. This was said to relate to the bird's habit of making a jumping dash into cover when startled from its resting place.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Due to its probably nocturnal habits it had large eyes. Its habitat were primary montane forests Its diet consists of insects and other small invertebrates that were preyed by digging the ground and leaf litter. Captive birds became sickly when fed a vegetable diet.
The eggs said to belong to this species were found in a nest on the ground that was made from twigs and grass. Natives claimed, even so, that the puna'e nested in burrows. It is not clear if they confused the rail with petrels or shearwaters (that make similar grunting calls – see below – and nest in burrows) or whether they meant simply scraped-out hollows in the ground. 3D view of specimens RMNH 110.046 and RMNH 110.060 at Naturalis, Leiden (requires QuickTime browser plugin).
In crisis
Samoan Wood Rail is Critically 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 Samoan Wood Rail, Wikidata item Q1065072. 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.
