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Common Moorhen | Gallinula chloropus
Waterhoen | Gallineta común
The Common Moorhen is the most widespread rail in the Caribbean, found on almost every island with fresh or brackish water and fringing vegetation. It swims like a duck, with a nodding head and cocked tail, but lacks webbed feet and also walks over floating plants and along the shore. The American birds are now usually treated as a separate species, Common Gallinule Gallinula galeata; this guide lists them under the older, broader concept.
Voice
A wide range of cackling and clucking sounds. Typical are an explosive, rolling krrruk and a series of rapid, hen-like kek-kek-kek calls that slow down and end in plaintive notes. Disturbed birds hiss; it also calls at night.
Recording: Roger Ahlman — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
32–35 cm, compact, with a short tail and long toes. Head, neck and underparts are slate grey, the back and wings olive-brown. A broken white line runs along the flank, and the cocked tail shows two white patches either side of a black centre. Bill and frontal shield are red, the bill tip yellow. In American birds the shield is broad and squared off at the top. The legs are yellow-green, with a red band above the tibiotarsal joint. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are grey-brown with a pale throat, a whitish flank line and a dark bill without the red shield; downy chicks are black with a reddish bill base.
Confusion species
American Coot Fulica americana is larger and uniformly dark grey, with a white bill, no flank line and lobed toes. Purple Gallinule Porphyrio martinica is purple-blue and green, with a pale blue shield and yellow legs; young Purple Gallinules are browner and paler than young moorhens, with greenish wings and no white flank line.
Habitat
Ponds, lakes, canals, ditches, river banks, rice fields, sewage ponds and the edges of freshwater marshes, wherever there is cover of reeds, sedges or floating plants; also brackish pools behind mangroves. It eats aquatic plants, seeds, snails, insects and other small animals, taken while swimming, walking over floating vegetation or grazing on the bank. The nest is a cup of plant material in the waterside vegetation, often just above the water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident in the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, nearly all islands of the Lesser Antilles, the ABC Islands, San Andrés and Trinidad and Tobago. On small, dry islands without fresh water it is absent or confined to a few ponds. Outside the region, in the American sense, from south-eastern Canada and the United States through Mexico and Central America to Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Almost any pond with fringing vegetation is worth checking, including those in town and hotel grounds and on golf courses, where the birds are often used to people. A swimming bird is recognised by its nodding head and flicking tail with the white undertail patches. Juveniles are told from young Purple Gallinules by the flank line and the undertail.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species adapts well to man-made waters such as reservoirs, rice fields and sewage ponds. Habitat is lost locally through the draining and filling of wetlands, and on some islands the birds are hunted.
Scientific name
Gallinula chloropus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Fulica Chloropus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Gallinula was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Gallinula is Latin for 'little hen', a diminutive of gallina 'hen'. chloropus combines Greek khlōros 'green' and pous 'foot', for the greenish legs. The specimen the first description was based on came from England.