Common Gallinule

About the Common Gallinule

A striking marsh bird often mistaken for a duck, the Common Gallinule is slate-gray and brownish with a vivid candy-red bill and forehead shield tipped in yellow, a white stripe along the flank, and long yellow-green legs with big, unwebbed toes. Formerly lumped as the moorhen, it swims, wades, and clambers through the reeds with equal ease.

Gallinules pick their way along the edges of ponds and marshes, feeding on plants, seeds, snails, and insects, pumping their heads as they swim and flicking their white-sided tails. Their loud, cackling, laughing calls ring out from dense cover.

In Texas the Common Gallinule is a resident and warm-season breeder of freshwater marshes, ponds, and vegetated lake edges, most numerous in the eastern and coastal parts of the state.

A note from behind the lens: they skulk at the reed edge but come into the open on calm mornings. Set up low across the water where the light is soft, and wait for a bird to step out of the vegetation - that red shield glows against the green.