Description
The Zapata Rail is a medium-sized, dark rail, approximately 29 cm (11.4 in) long. The upperparts are olive-brown and the forehead, head sides and underparts are slate-grey, with some white barring on the lower belly. The flanks are grey-brown and the undertail is white. The iris, legs and feet are red, and the bill is yellow with a red base. The tail feathers are only sparsely barbed, and the wings are very short and rounded. The sexes are similar in appearance, but immature birds are duller and have olive feet and bill; the chicks, as with all rails, are covered with blackish down. The Zapata Rail's call is described as a bouncing cutucutu-cutucutu-cutucutu similar to that of the Bare-legged Owl, and a loud Limpkin-like kuvk kuck. However, these calls may actually be those of the Spotted Rail.
There are no similar species in Cuba; the sympatric Spotted Rail is much the same size, but is heavily spotted and barred with white. The Zapata Rail's plumage is intermediate between those of Colombian Crake and Plumbeous Rail, but these are mainland birds of Central and South America.
Read more about this topic: Zapata Rail
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)