Rallus caerulescens
Silhouette: Ferran Sayol · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~30%
The African rail (Rallus caerulescens), sometimes also Kaffir rail, is a small wetland bird of the rail family that is found in eastern and southern Africa. The African rail was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other rails in the genus Rallus and coined the binomial name Rallus caerulescens. Gmelin based his description on the "blue necked rail" from the Cape of Good Hope that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. The naturalist Joseph Banks had provided Latham with a water-colour drawing of the rail by Georg Forster who had accompanied James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The picture was painted in 1773 at the Cape of Good Hope. It is now the holotype for the species and is held by the Natural History Museum in London. The specific epithet caerulescens is from Latin and means "bluish". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
Adults are 27–28 cm (10.6–11.0 in) long, and have mainly brown upperparts and blue-grey... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Coast National Park | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 2 | Ngorongoro Conservation Area | 🇹🇿 Tanzania | |
| 3 | Nairobi National Park | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 4 | Bwindi Impenetrable National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 5 | Kidepo Valley National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 6 | Garden Route National Park | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 7 | Akagera National Park | 🇷🇼 Rwanda | |
| 8 | Tarangire National Park | 🇹🇿 Tanzania | |
| 9 | Arusha National Park | 🇹🇿 Tanzania | |
| 10 | Lake Mburo National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 11 | iSimangaliso Wetland Park | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 12 | Moremi Game Reserve | 🇧🇼 Botswana | |
| 13 | Amboseli National Park | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 14 | Etosha National Park | 🇳🇦 Namibia |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report an African Rail sighting in Nairobi National Park on a given day, based on 69 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 241st most-seen of the 371 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 30%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May and July–October
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report an African Rail in Nairobi National Park on a given day, against under 5% in June and November–April, the lowest months.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most African Rail sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
3rd of 14
Of the 14 parks where we can rate African Rail sightings, Nairobi National Park ranks 3rd at under 5%. The best odds are in West Coast National Park (South Africa, about 20%) and Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Tanzania, under 5%).
Same family: Rallidae
The closest relatives of the African Rail that you can see in Nairobi National Park (family Rallidae, Rails, Gallinules, and Coots) are Common Moorhen (about 30%) and Black Crake (about 30%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the African Rail is recorded against all the birds logged in Nairobi National Park (69 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
