Purple Swamphen or Purple Moorhen

Description:

Bright plumage in shades of blue, a red bill, red eyes and orangey-red feet.

Habitat:

This was photographed in a swampy area overgrown with aquatic weeds and reeds ...in fading evening light as we were driving down a narrow lane. All around the area new buildings were coming up...no guessing how long the habitat will survive; and the birds.

Notes:

There were Pond herons (Ardeola grayei) here as well. "Taxonomic note Porphyrio porphyrio (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) was split into P. porphyrio, P. indicus, P. madagascariensis, P. melanotus, P. poliocephalus and P. pulverulentus by Sangster et al. (1998), but this treatment is not adopted by the BirdLife Taxonomic Working Group. This is because although there is fair degree of variation between the continental forms of porphyrio (with the race pulverulentus the most distinct), a detailed analysis of character differences is required to determine levels of distinctiveness and variation. Pending such studies, porphyrio is retained as a single polytypic species."http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=2927