Gray-headed Swamphen Identification

The Four Keys to ID

• Size & Shape

  A large, heavyset, chickenlike bird with long legs, long toes, a thick neck and head, heavy bill, and short tail often held cocked.

  Relative Size

  Larger than a Purple Gallinule, smaller than a Limpkin.

  between crow and goose

  Measurements

  • Both Sexes
  • • Length: 15.0-19.7 in (38-50 cm)
    • Weight: 17.8-30.0 oz (505-850 g)
    • Wingspan: 35.4-39.4 in (90-100 cm)

  © Sean Fitzgerald / Macaulay Library

• Color Pattern

  Largely greenish above, purplish below, with grayish to bluish head and red bill and frontal shield. Also shows violet hindneck, blue-green breast, white undertail coverts, and red legs.

• Behavior

  Walks through shallow water and eats soft shoots of aquatic vegetation or pulls plants with bill, then holds them with the feet. Sometimes forages while walking on floating vegetation, walking on dry land, swimming, or climbing into vegetation. Sometimes breeds communally, with multiple males and females using a single nest and defending territory together.
• Habitat

  Numerous aquatic habitats, from pristine sawgrass marshes and freshwater sloughs in the Everglades to ponds, lakes, retention ponds, borrow pits, ditches, flooded rice fields, and golf courses in urban and suburban areas.