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TranslatePurple Gallinule (Porphyrio porphyrio)
Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio porphyrio)
Family: Rallidae.
Length: 45 to 50cm Wingspan: 90 to 100cm
The Purple Gallinule is a beautifully coloured bird, shaped similar to the moorhen but a larger bird overall. It is a close relative to coots and rails, the immature Gallinule’s have a brown-bronze plumage and a white under-tail coverts.
It has very large feet with long toes, enabling it to break off young shoots. It regularly eats a shoot by holding it between its toes, (as seen in some of the images below) also the long toes enable the bird good balance as they walk across lily pads with ease.
Habitat: Fresh water marshes, shallow margins of lakes and rivers all having dense stands of vegetation.
Feeding: Diet is mainly vegetation, will also feed on a variety of insects, (image shown below of a dragon fly being caught) snails, seeds, leaves, roots and fruits of aquatic and terrestrial plants, frogs, earthworms, fish and other opportunities that they come across while wading in the water, including eggs and young chicks from the nests of other water birds.
Voice: Loud and abrupt bleating and hooting calls, not at all bird like noises.
Can be found in Southern Spain, Sardinia and Egypt.
Nesting: The females start laying from mid-March, mid-May in the northern hemisphere temperate regions. Around eight eggs that are buff or pale pink with brown and purple spots in colour and are laid early in the season, a second brood later in the year will on average be less in number. Nests are built basket shaped floating within dense vegetation. Both parents take turns in incubating, which takes about three weeks; both parents feed the young. They fledge after forty to fifty days, the young birds soon become independent a few weeks after fledging and may even raise a brood of their own in the following year. When threatened, the young bird may cling onto a parent for protection and then enabling the parent bird to fly away to safety with the young chicks.
The Purple gallinules nest and territories are defended by both of the parents and the juveniles sometimes remain in the area helping to care for the siblings.
This species is parasitised by the Moorhen flea, Dasypsyllus gallinulae.
Below are images of both adult and juvenile Purple Gallinules.
Read MoreFamily: Rallidae.
Length: 45 to 50cm Wingspan: 90 to 100cm
The Purple Gallinule is a beautifully coloured bird, shaped similar to the moorhen but a larger bird overall. It is a close relative to coots and rails, the immature Gallinule’s have a brown-bronze plumage and a white under-tail coverts.
It has very large feet with long toes, enabling it to break off young shoots. It regularly eats a shoot by holding it between its toes, (as seen in some of the images below) also the long toes enable the bird good balance as they walk across lily pads with ease.
Habitat: Fresh water marshes, shallow margins of lakes and rivers all having dense stands of vegetation.
Feeding: Diet is mainly vegetation, will also feed on a variety of insects, (image shown below of a dragon fly being caught) snails, seeds, leaves, roots and fruits of aquatic and terrestrial plants, frogs, earthworms, fish and other opportunities that they come across while wading in the water, including eggs and young chicks from the nests of other water birds.
Voice: Loud and abrupt bleating and hooting calls, not at all bird like noises.
Can be found in Southern Spain, Sardinia and Egypt.
Nesting: The females start laying from mid-March, mid-May in the northern hemisphere temperate regions. Around eight eggs that are buff or pale pink with brown and purple spots in colour and are laid early in the season, a second brood later in the year will on average be less in number. Nests are built basket shaped floating within dense vegetation. Both parents take turns in incubating, which takes about three weeks; both parents feed the young. They fledge after forty to fifty days, the young birds soon become independent a few weeks after fledging and may even raise a brood of their own in the following year. When threatened, the young bird may cling onto a parent for protection and then enabling the parent bird to fly away to safety with the young chicks.
The Purple gallinules nest and territories are defended by both of the parents and the juveniles sometimes remain in the area helping to care for the siblings.
This species is parasitised by the Moorhen flea, Dasypsyllus gallinulae.
Below are images of both adult and juvenile Purple Gallinules.
