Virginia rail
The Virginia rail probe with its bill in mud or shallow water, also picking up food by sight. It mainly eat insects and other aquatic invertebrates, like beetles, flies, dragonflies, crayfish, snails and earthworms. It can also eat aquatic animals like frogs, fish and some small snakes, as well as seeds. Animal preys constitute the biggest part of this bird's diet, but vegetation contributes to its diet in the fall and winter.
Water rail
Parasites include the sucking lice "Nirmus cuspidiculus" and "Pediculus ralli", the tick "Ixodes frontalis", and the louse fly "Ornithomyia avicularia". The water rail can be infected by the avian influenza virus and the bacterium "Borrelia burgdorferi", carried by "Ixodes" ticks, which is also a human pathogen causing Lyme disease. Three lice, "Fulicoffula rallina", "Pseudomenopon scopulacorne" and "Rallicola cuspidatus" discovered on dead water rails in 2005 on the Faroe Islands were all species that had not been found on the archipelago previously. The parasitic flatworm "Ophthalmophagus nasciola" was found in one rail's nasal sinus, and at least three species of feather mite have been detected on the plumage. The louse "Philopterus ralli" and the nematode "Strongyloides avium" have been found on the closely related brown-cheeked rail "R. a. indicus".