After reading my recent post The Moorhen, the gallinule and the pukeko, my friend Viv, who lives in Thailand, sent me this wonderful photo of their local swamphen. This is the Grey-headed swamphen (Porphyrio poliocephalus) and Viv writes:

‘This was taken 4 years ago on a wetland area in a National Park down south in Songkla province. They were everywhere there striding across the water hyacinth searching for food. I have seen one Swamp hen locally, on another wetland area that borders the paddy fields but it’s not being managed and the reeds have swamped everything so spotting wildlife, especially birds, is difficult.’

One of my fellow bloggers, Theresa Green, also got in touch with details of the swamphens she saw when she lived in southern Spain. Hers were Purple Gallinules (Porphyrio porphyrio) and she has written an excellent well-illustrated blog about these birds and their antics that you can check out here.