Habitat
Marshland vegetation types, requiring dense vegetation where the overall canopy cover is more than 65 % and areas of mud, firm ground or short vegetation.
Food
Predominantly invertebrates such as earthworms, small gastropods, spiders, adult and larval insects and crustaceans. In the non-breeding season possibly also grass seeds.
Red-chested Flufftail (Sarothrura rufa) [XC546434]
by Dries Van de Loock from Kasanka National Park, Zambia (call)
Red-chested Flufftail (Sarothrura rufa) [XC669901]
by Peter Boesman from Port Alfred, Eastern Cape, South Africa (song)
Nest
A cup of vegetation, well hidden in a clump of damp or shallowly flooded grass or herbaceous vegetation 8 - 30 cm above the ground or the surface of water at the edge of marshy areas.
Subspecies
Genus sometimes merged into Coturnicops. Subspecies ansorgei proposed for birds of Angola.
The following 3 subspecies are recognised:
bonapartii (Bonaparte, 1856) - Scattered records from Sierra Leone east to Nigeria; more continuously in Cameroon, Gabon and Congo.
elizabethae van Someren, 1919 - Ethiopia; Central African Republic and north-eastern Zaire east to Uganda and western Kenya.
rufa (Vieillot, 1819) - Central Kenya through Tanzania, southern Zaire and Angola to South Africa.