鷭 (バン) - translation help needed

[LiuRonghe]

H
Hi!

The following sentence describes the behavior of a bird called 鷭 (バン).

鷭の行動：泳ぎ回るよりも、水際や水草の上を歩き回っ て採食し、クイナ類ほどではないが、警戒心は強い。

I'm really having a hard time understanding it. I understand isolated parts, but can't put them all together.

Could anybody please help me with a translation?

 

[Toritoribe]

You can separate the sentence into two parts.

（鷭は）泳ぎ回るよりも、水際や水草の上を歩き回って 採食する。
（鷭は）クイナ類ほどではないが、警戒心は強い。

Further, the core structure of the first part is "AするよりもBして採食する" or "to feed by doing B rather than doing A". (A ＝ 泳ぎ回る, B ＝ 水際や水草の上を歩き回る)

 

[bakaKanadajin]

鷭の行動：泳ぎ回るよりも、水際や水草の上を歩き回っ て採食し、クイナ類ほどではないが、警戒心は強い。
?

"Bird behaviour: Rather than swimming around, it likes to walk around on the water grass by the water's edge searching for food. It's not a 'rail' bird, but it's very cautious."

I don't know what a rail bird is I had to look that up.
But that was the translation for クイナ類

But yea...that's the basic first-impression translation I got

 

[undrentide]

Behaviour of moorhens:
tend to walk on the water's edge or waterweed than swimming for forage,
and rather vigilant though not as much as Rallidae.

バン and オオバン in Japan
http://www3.famille.ne.jp/~ochi/bird/ban-1.html

クイナ
http://www.yachoo.org/Book/Show/195/kuina/
ヤンバルクイナ
http://www.yachoo.org/Book/Show/196/yanbarukuina/
オオクイナ
http://www.yachoo.org/Book/Show/197/ookuina/
ヒクイナ
http://www.yachoo.org/Book/Show/200/hikuina/

 

[Glenn]

I never quite know how to feel when I come across things in Japanese that I never learned about in English. Looking at the English surely doesn't help. In the case of animals I usually resort to pictures.

 

[LiuRonghe]

Thank you all people for your help. You make this a great forum.

Now I fully understand the text in Japanese.