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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • Vol. 123, No. 4. December 2011 
FIG. 3. Pen-and-ink drawing of the Wake Island Rail (Gallircillus wakensis ) from the original by D. M. Henry in the 
Smithsonian Institution Archives (RU 7402), originally published in Greenway (1958; figure 24). 
Adult Soft Part Colors.— The bill and feet are 
brown (in skin) (Rothschild 1903:78). “Legs and 
feet brownish gray” (Spencer 1959). The eye is 
red, the bill is brownish gray with a pink cast, the 
legs brownish gray (Lyons 1939. 26 Oct). Bayler 
(1943:21) also described the Wake Island Rail as 
being “red-eyed.” 
Juvenile Plumage .—Young two-thirds grown 
were described as “dusty black in color” (Lyons 
1939, 26 Jun). The only existing specimen in 
juvenile plumage (USNM 7 Jun 1937, Frontis¬ 
piece) appears small in body but has nearly adult 
measurements of bill and feel. There is no down 
remaining. The remiges are in sheath and arc less 
than half grown but show the distinct chestnut 
barring of the adult. The dorsum is a uniform dark 
fuscous. The lower parts are a somewhat lighter 
dark gray, paler and whitish on (he midline of the 
belly. The sides of the head and neck, except for a 
faint supercilium, are uniformly dark, so the 
brownish ocular stripe of the adult is not evident. 
The bill, tarsi, and toes arc black, in contrast with 
the paler, more brownish coloration of adults 
(dried skin colors). 
Downy Young— All black down (not pure black 
but no color shade is perceptible) (Fig. 4). thin, 
skin black with pinkish cast. Beak and feet black, 
eye brown (Lyons 1939, 26 Oct). Newly hatched 
birds in jet black down built like a baby chick 
[Ga/lus gallusl only legs relatively shorter and 
wider apart (Lyons 1939, 23 Oct). 
Plumage Comparisons with Congeners.— The 
overall plumage pattern of Gallirallus wakensis is 
actually quite similar to the superficially more 
ornate Buff-banded Rail, the most conspicuous 
difference being the absence of while spotting 
throughout the dorsum of the former. The dorsal 
feathers of G. philippensis are blackish with 
olivaceous edges. This is muted in G. wakensis 
to a dark hair brown with lighter, grayish margins. 
The ocular stripe, nape and crown of G. 
philippensis are chestnut, the crown suffused with 
black, whereas in G. wakensis these areas are a 
dark brown nearly concolorous with the dorsum. 
The underparts in the two species are similarly 
barred and banded, the main difference being that 
in G. wakensis the background barring is dark 
gray rather than blackish. The Guam Rail is 
identical in plumage pattern to G. wakensis but 
with darker tones. The pectoral band may be 
missing altogether at times in G. owstoni and the 
light barring of the remiges is entirely white, 
without chestnut. Direct evolution of plumage of 
G. wakensis from G. philippensis would appear to 
involve only loss of the white dorsal spotting and 
diminution in color intensity in the rest of the 
plumage. 
Size, Morphology, and Flightlessness. —Live- 
zey (2003), in an exhaustive quantitative analysis 
of the morphological manifestations of flightless¬ 
ness in the Rullidae, concluded that Gallirallus 
wakensis was small relative to its congeners 
(Livezey 2003), a fact that had been readily 
observable since the species' discovery. Livezey’s 
repeated attention to ‘dwarfism’ or ‘nanism’ in the 
Wake Island Rail may be overemphasized, as the 
head size, as represented by skull and mandible 
lengths, is not much less than in G. philippensis , 
