seasonal breeder, laying between October and January. They are monogamous, forming permanent pair-bonds. The nests are situated at the base of ferns with tussock grass, tussock grass clumps, or in tufts of sedges. The nests are domed and oval or pear shaped, with the entrances near the narrow end of the nest and linked by a track or tunnel that can go up to half a metre away. The nests are typically built entirely of the same material the nest is found in; for example, tussock grass or sedges. Where the construction material is tussock grass, larger leaves are used on the outside and finer material lines the nest. There are a few reports of other material being used as lining, such as the leaves of introduced Malus domestica (apple) or Salix babylonica (willow). The clutch size is two eggs, which is low for such small rails. The eggs are greyish milk white dotted with brown-rufous spots and lavender-mauve spots that are concentrated around the apex of the egg. They are large for the size of the mother compared to other rails, and resemble the eggs of the corn crake. The incubation period for the species is not known, but both sexes incubate the clutch, although the males incubated for longer in the observations that have been made. Both sexes bring food to their partner that is incubating, which is either consumed on the nest or close to the nest. Changeovers of incubation details are preceded by "chip chip chip" calls, which become louder and more frequent the longer its takes the partner to respond. The eggs hatch within between 23 and 32 hours of each other and can be preceded by the chick in the egg calling for up to 45 hours before hatching. One hatching was recorded as taking 15 hours to complete. Newly hatched chicks are covered by downy black plumage, the legs, feet and bill are black, and the mouth is silvery. Ecology Lowe speculated in his 1927 paper that, in the absence of mammalian predators on the island, the brown skua would be the Inaccessible Island rail's only predator. A study of the diet of brown skuas on Inaccessible Island confirmed this, but found that although skuas do eat adults of this species, the rail and other landbirds formed only a small part of the diet of that seabird, especially compared to their abundance on