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Difference between revisions of "Grey-headed Swamphen" - BirdForum Opus

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Revision as of 11:13, 18 August 2015

Photo by Shantilal Varu
Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India, October 2013
Porphyrio poliocephalus

Identification

  • Red bill and frontal shield
  • Large feet
  • Green back

Distribution

From Turkey east to Iran, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, southern China and northern Thailand.

Taxonomy

Formerly considered conspecific with African Swamphen, Western Swamphen, Black-backed Swamphen, Philippine Swamphen and Australasian Swamphen under the name Purple Swamphen.

Subspecies

Three subspecies recognized:

Habitat

Reed beds and wet areas with high rainfall, swamps, lake edges and damp pastures.

Behaviour

The birds live in pairs and larger communities.

Breeding

The birds make a nest of woven reeds on floating debris or amongst reeds. More than one female will use the nest and they share incubating the eggs for 24 days. Each bird lays 3-6 speckled eggs and the nest can contain up to 12 eggs.

Diet

Diet includes tender shoots and vegetable-like matter, invertebrates (like snails), small fish, and eggs from nests and also eat ducklings. It is a good swimmer, especially for a bird without webbed feet.

References

  1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2015. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2015, with updates to August 2015. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. Trewick, S.A. 1997. "Flightlessness and phylogeny amongst endemic rails (Aves: Rallidae) of the New Zealand region." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. (352) 429-46.
  3. Sangster, G. 1998. "Purple Swamp-hen is a complex of species." Dutch Birding (20) 13-22.
  4. Gill, F and D Donsker (Eds). 2015. IOC World Bird Names (version 5.3). Available at http://www.worldbirdnames.org/.
  5. Wikipedia
  6. Absolute Astronomy

Recommended Citation

External Links


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