Water rail
Water rails are omnivorous, although they mainly feed on animals. These include leeches, worms, gastropods, small crustaceans, spiders, and a wide range of both terrestrial and aquatic insects and their larvae. Small vertebrates such as amphibians, fish, birds and mammals may be killed or eaten as carrion. Vertebrates are impaled with a strike of the bill which breaks the prey's spinal cord. Plant food, which is consumed more in autumn and winter, includes the buds, flowers, shoots and seeds of water plants, berries and fruit. In south Asia, paddy (harvested rice kernels) may sometimes be eaten. The young rails are fed mainly on insects and spiders. Food obtained on land or from mud is normally washed in water before it is eaten. After rain, rails may probe soft ground for earthworms. This species will occasionally feed in the open even when not forced to do so by cold weather; Edmund Meade-Waldo described seven rails feeding in an open meadow. Despite its skulking nature, the water rail appears to thrive in captivity when fed on animal food such as raw meat or earthworms; one individual was taught to jump for worms suspended from a fishing rod.
Water rail
Both parents incubate the eggs, although the female takes the larger share of this duty. The eggs are incubated for 19–22 days to hatching, with at least 87% success. Food is brought to the nest by the other adult and passed to the sitting parent who feeds the chicks. The precocial, downy young leave the nest within two days of hatching but continue to be fed by their parents, although the chicks also find some of their own food after about five days. They are independent of their parents after 20–30 days and can fly when aged 7–9 weeks. If a nest appears to have been discovered, the female may carry the chicks or eggs one by one to another location; the eggs are carried in the bill, but small chicks may be tucked under the wing. Sitting birds may stay on the eggs even when approached closely, attack the intruder, or feign injury as a distraction. The water rail can breed after its first year, and it normally raises two broods.