What do water rails eat?
Water rail
Water rails are omnivorous, although they mainly feed on animals. These include leeches, worms, gastropods, small crustaceans, spiders, and a wide range of both terrestrial and aquatic insects and their larvae. Small vertebrates such as amphibians, fish, birds and mammals may be killed or eaten as carrion. Vertebrates are impaled with a strike of the bill which breaks the prey's spinal cord. Plant food, which is consumed more in autumn and winter, includes the buds, flowers, shoots and seeds of water plants, berries and fruit.[19] In south Asia, paddy (harvested rice kernels) may sometimes be eaten.[25] The young rails are fed mainly on insects and spiders. Food obtained on land or from mud is normally washed in water before it is eaten.[19] After rain, rails may probe soft ground for earthworms.[21] This species will occasionally feed in the open even when not forced to do so by cold weather; Edmund Meade-Waldo described seven rails feeding in an open meadow.[42] Despite its skulking nature, the water rail appears to thrive in captivity when fed on animal food such as raw meat or earthworms;[43] one individual was taught to jump for worms suspended from a fishing rod.[33]
Lissorhoptrus oryzophilus
Rice water weevils go through 1 generation in Japan and California, but in parts of southern China and the southern US they will undergo up to 3-4 generations per year. The adults feed on leaves and the sheath leaving diagnostic feeding scars which can help gauge the severity of an infestation. the adults will lay eggs beginning in March through May depending on the latitude. The larvae feed on the roots, which is the cause of yield reduction in rice. The loss of roots, reduces the number of plant tillers, which are the panicle bearing structures of the rice plant. Reduction in tillering leads directly to yield loss. In case of strong infestations yield losses can reach 30%.