Buff-banded Rail preenk Tentative
Putative nocturnal call type
The call appears as a compact cluster of several short broadband elements, each beginning as a narrow vertical stroke indicating a very brief, broadband pulse. Immediately following some of these pulses is a short horizontal component at approximately 5 kHz, forming a brief tonal tail after the initial broadband onset.
Most acoustic energy is concentrated between approximately 2.5 and 4.5 kHz, with the strongest intensity around 3–4 kHz, while the thin horizontal component sits slightly higher in frequency near ~5 kHz. Individual elements show little internal frequency sweep, appearing largely vertical, with the horizontal segment representing a brief sustained tone rather than a sweep.
The overall call duration is short, roughly 0.3–0.5 seconds, and consists of several discrete pulses delivered in rapid succession. On the spectrogram this produces the characteristic appearance of a small cluster of vertical strokes, each occasionally followed by a thin horizontal line at higher frequency.
Evidence for identification
The Buff-banded Rail preenk call appears to be an elongated version of the SQUEAK call described in HANZAB. As birds fly over the microphone, it is usually repeated 4–5 times at intervals of 15–20 seconds. The SQUEAK call is the typical vocalisation heard by birders of this species, and although the preenk call sounds like a Buff-banded Rail to many listeners, it doesn't sound quite right. Indeed the spectrogram differs in several respects to even the best-matching reference calls (see comparison image). Therefore, this nocturnal flight call is regarded as only tentatively identified. Additional evidence is needed to assign it more confidently to species. If this turns out indeed to be Buff-banded Rail, it's worth noting that the typical SQUEAK call is occasionally heard in nocturnal recordings as well.
Project detections: 119 annotations; 27 nights; recorded in January, March, April, November; most recent detection 29 Apr 2026.
Project clips
Typical preenk call given by a bird flying overhead Featured
Typical flight preenk call, perhaps a little distorted by distance
Typical flight preenk call
