Inaccessible Island Rail

This rail has an average weight of 30 grams and a length of 17 centimeters. It is dark rusty-brown above and dark grey below, with a short black bill and a red eye.

The Inaccessible Island Rail is classified as Vulnerable (VU), considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild.

The Inaccessible Island Rail is perhaps the coolest bird that neither I nor anyone I will ever meet will ever see. The world’s smallest, still-extant, flightless bird is only found on the aptly-named Inaccessible Island, an island in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago of the south Atlantic Ocean (the largest island in the archipelago is also called Tristan da Cunha but people from the UK will recognize it as St. Helena). More

The Inaccessible Island Rail is perhaps the coolest bird that neither I nor anyone I will ever meet will ever see. More

The Inaccessible Island Rail, Atlantisia rogersi, is a small bird of the rail family, Rallidae. It is the only species in its genus. It is found only on Inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago, and is notable for being the smallest extant flightless bird in the world. Unlike many other islands, Inaccessible Island has remained free from introduced predators, allowing this species to flourish while many other flightless birds, including the even smaller Stephens Island Wren, have perished. More

species, The Inaccessible Island Rail, is available to be seen - there are likely to be enough twitchers in the party who will have armed themselves with recordings of its call and loudspeakers to play them to tempt it out! Have you been to Gough and Inaccessible Islands ? Share your experiences! Add your own review * Home * Inscribed list * Tentative list More