Red Rail - Behaviour and Ecology

Behaviour and Ecology

Contemporary accounts are repetitive and do not shed much light on the bird's life history. Its diet was never reported, but the shape of the beak indicates it could have captured reptiles and invertebrates. There were many endemic land snails on Mauritius, including the extinct Tropidophora carinata, and subfossil shells have been found with damage matching attacks from the beak of the Red Rail.

An anonymous Dutchman gave some description of behavioural traits in 1631:

The soldiers were very small in stature and slow of foot, so they could be caught easily by hand, their armour or gun was their mouth, which was sharp and pointed, and which they used instead of a dagger, were very naked and, not hewing about like soldiers, run about in great disorder, now here, now there, not being true to each other at all.

While it was swift and could escape when chased, it was easily lured by waving a red cloth, which they approached to attack; a similar behaviour was noted in its relative, the Rodrigues Rail. The birds could then be picked up, and their cries when held would draw more individuals to the scene, as the birds, which had evolved in the absence of predators, were curious and not afraid of humans.

The English traveller Sir Thomas Herbert described its behaviour towards red cloth in 1634:

The hens in eating taste like parched pigs, if you see a flocke of twelve or twenties, shew them a red cloth, and with their utmost silly fury they will altogether flie upon it, and if you strike downe one, the rest are as good as caught, not budging an iot till they be all destroyed.

Many other endemic species of Mauritius went extinct after the arrival of man heavily damaged the ecosystem, making it hard to reconstruct. Before humans arrived, Mauritius was entirely covered in forests, but very little remains today due to deforestation. The surviving endemic fauna is still seriously threatened. The Red Rail lived alongside other recently extinct Mauritian birds such as the Dodo, the Broad-billed Parrot, Mascarene Grey Parakeet, the Mauritius Blue Pigeon, the Mauritius Owl, the Mascarene Coot, the Mauritian Shelduck, the Mauritian Duck, and the Mauritius Night Heron. Extinct Mauritian reptiles include the saddle-backed Mauritius giant tortoise, the domed Mauritius giant tortoise, the Mauritian giant skink, and the Round Island burrowing boa. The small Mauritian flying fox and the snail Tropidophora carinata lived on Mauritius and Réunion, but went extinct in both islands. Some plants, such as Casearia tinifolia and the palm orchid, have also become extinct.