The Skulker

On one of my recent morning walks I saw a bird on the edge of some reeds near the path. When I first saw it, I wasn’t quite sure what it was. I could see that it was a medium-sized bird that lacked any prominent colouration, which made me think that it was something a little bit different, maybe a thrush or a similarly-sized ground-dwelling bird. The closer I got the more the features became clear, and I realised it was a rail or a crake of some sort. Not having seen one in that location before, I wasn’t quite sure exactly what species it might be. Once I got clear views, I was delighted to see it was Buff-banded Rail.

There is a group of birds called ‘skulkers’, so-called because they are cryptically-coloured and like to stay hidden, and generally move around in areas of vegetation where they’ve got protection (I can relate to that!) As I approached this particular ‘skulker’, it disappeared into the reeds. There were other people on the walk, coming along the path behind me, so I decided I’d keep going on my walk and then see if I could see it on the way back.

I finished the first leg of my walk, and turned around at the end of the path - back-tracking to the area where I saw the bird. As I stood there, I could see it moving around amongst some dense tussocks; true to its reputation, it was staying mostly hidden. It almost certainly knew I was there, and just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to be a threat. I stood there for about 10 minutes, just watching it and occasionally filming it on my iPhone. It was still well-hidden, and people wouldn’t be able to see what it really was from my video, but they’d get a bit of an idea of its habits.

After a while it moved out from the reeds and onto the shorter grass about a metre and a half in front of me. It was the most beautiful thing. It stayed there for about ten seconds, I suppose, just feeding and having a look around. Just then (around 50 m away) there was another group of three people walking towards us. I think they saw that I was filming something so they stopped, but the bird had already seen them and darted back into the reeds for protection.

It was so very special to spend those few precious minutes observing it.