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Amaurornis phoenicurus
Looks like a small, undernourished hen alright. Chicks are dark balls of fluff. Adults have a white face, neck and neck. They have greatly elongated toes and keep flicking their 'tails' as they walk. they have dark backs and wings. Rust coloured vent feathers...and a pink 'bindi on the spot where the upper beak meets the body.
This is a most interesting urban habitat. A small plot of land between two houses...one being constructed. When the house was being constructed , the owners dumped bricks, stone chips etc on this piece of land...lots of gunny bags (perhaps once containing cement). You can see these plastic bags in the third shot...those white conical things and what the chicks are standing on. Over time a shallow indentation on the land got filled with rainwater and some semi-aquatic vegetation developed here. I saw a Pond Heron make it a permanent place to catch prey...then I saw a pair of waterhens start sharing its resources...and NOW, there are three chicks. I stood for a long time watching...two chicks just stood there... sort of hiding behind the reedy grasses but the parent birds were all over the place...greedily and actively hunting insects. They were almost 'climbing' the reeds. One chick was slightly more exploratory but took care to remain shielded by a parent's body. Yesterday evening I had seen the three chicks foraging actively but today they just posed prettily for me.
https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/14... After a month this is what the chicks look like.
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The adults I have seen here are pretty nonchalant. One even flew in through the window of my friend's house as her daughter was studying. In the last couple of years there has been litigation over a waterbody near my house. So nobody can touch this waterbody. Water hyacinth does not care; it has proliferated to cover the entire lake. Cormorants have disappeared but there has been an explosion in the local population of the waterhen.
Oh, I remember this one from Sri Lanka, they are quite nervous. They sprint away in a quite funny way if you approach them :) I think I have a spotting of this bird on my other account on projectnoah.