Cranes, Rails, and Allies
Gruiformes
The Gruiformes are an order containing a considerable number of living and extinct bird families, with a widespread geographical diversity. Gruiform means 'crane form'.
Traditionally, a number of wading and terrestrial bird families that did not seem to belong to any other order were classified together as Gruiformes. These include 15 species of large cranes, about 145 species of smaller crakes and rails, as well as a variety of families comprising one to three extant species, such as the Heliornithidae, the limpkin (Aramidae), or the Psophiidae.
7 branches of this order, most-observed first · about 169 known species
Rails, Gallinules, and Coots
familyRallidae
Cranes
familyGruidae
Limpkins
familyAramidae
Finfoots
familyHeliornithidae
Trumpeters
familyPsophiidae
Flufftails and Forest Rails
familySarothruridae
Adzebills
familyAptornithidae
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Gruiformes in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 4.