Pale-vented Bush-hen

The pale-vented bush-hen or rufous-tailed bush-hen (Amaurornis moluccana) is a medium sized waterbird, mainly blue-grey with a buff vent and undertail. It is found in Australia, the Moluccan Islands, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. == Taxonomy and systematics == The pale-vented bush-hen is a member of the family Rallidae which includes crakes and rails. The genus name Amaurornis (Reichenbach 1853) is from the Greek for dark, shadowy or dim, amauros, and bird, ornis. The species name Amaurornis moluccana (Wallace, 1865) means "Moluccan dark and shadowy bird" and relates its original discovery in the Moluccan Islands, Indonesia. The term pale-vented came into use in the late 1990s as a descriptive term, when the species of bush hens in Australia and New Guinea were separated from the Plain Bush-hen (A. olivaceus) endemic to the Philippines. It is widely known in Australia as simply "bush-hen" but has also been known as rufous-tailed or rufous-vented rail, crake or moorhen or brown rail. Gould believed he had found a new species, Gallinula ruficrissa in 1869 giving it the common name of rufous-vented gallinule. == Description == The pale-vented bush-hen is medium…