Unlike the UK, where until recently most records concerned vagrants, the Netherlands host a small but highly variable number of Bailllon’s Crakes each year, with a handful of sites being fairly reliable. With one, formerly two Sound Approach recordists living there, we have been in a good position to gain experience with the species. Breeding is often suspected but very difficult to prove or study, so that many uncertainties still exist. In 2005, Magnus Robb was privileged to join Ruud van Beusekom and Phil Koken in documenting breeding of Baillon’s Crake in the Netherlands for the first time in 30 years. Most of the sounds presented here date from that year, and come from two sites where breeding certainly took place. Arnoud van den Berg made the other recording at a different location, where breeding has been proven in subsequent years.
The best-known advertising call of Baillon’s Crake, thought to be given only by males, is a dry rattle with an even or slightly rising pitch and an even or increasing volume.
The advertising call currently thought to be female-only is a dry rattle with a distinctly falling pitch, and a decrease in volume towards the end.
In 2005, one of the best ways to find Baillon’s in the breeding ditches was to listen for an almost Sedge Warbler-like tak call. The male in this recording also gives a short burst of soft rattling, with an almost purring timbre.
The Acrocephalus quality is even more evident in this recording, in which a Eurasian Coot Fulica atra and a Water Rail Rallus aquaticus can be heard in the background.
An unforgettable call that we have only recorded twice is a loud, almost magpie Pica-like rattle. Here, an adult leading young was giving hoarse quibbu calls, which twice erupted into the rattle.