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The Lustrous Purple Gallinule
Vibrant color can actually help blend in with a marsh.
© ryanacandee / FCC
What’s the most colorful bird in the U.S.? The Scarlet Tanager? Maybe the Painted Bunting? Well, consider one more lustrous candidate: the Purple Gallinule. The Purple Gallinule’s feathers are so iridescent that they might not seem real. Despite its bold style, a Purple Gallinule can be hard to spot. The colors create excellent camouflage among the greens, blues and floral highlights of a marsh.
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BirdNote®
The Lustrous Purple Gallinule
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
What’s the most colorful bird in the U.S.? The Scarlet Tanager? Maybe the Painted Bunting? Well, consider one more lustrous candidate: the Purple Gallinule.
[Purple Gallinule call]
The Purple Gallinule’s feathers are so iridescent that they might not seem real. The head, neck and underparts are purple. Colors shade down the back from purple, to indigo, to azure, to golden green. The forehead is blue, beak red, and legs yellow. Catching the sun, the entire bird shimmers.
[Purple Gallinule call]
Despite its bold style, a Purple Gallinule can be hard to spot. The colors create excellent camouflage among the greens, blues and floral highlights of a marsh.
[Purple Gallinule call]
With lightweight bodies and extremely long toes, gallinules stride deftly atop water lilies and other vegetation, snatching up snails, insects and plants of many kinds.
The Purple Gallinule might sound impractical with its big feet and vivid colors. But find one in a marsh and all the parts of this bizarre bird will suddenly make sense.
[Purple Gallinule]
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
Support comes from Wild Delight Bird Food, offering a variety of blends designed to mimic the natural resources wild birds crave, available at Chewy.com
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.
Purple Gallinule Xeno Canto 173689 recorded by Eric DeFonso.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote June 2023 / March 2026
Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID# PUGA-01-2023-06-23 PUGA-01
Bob Sundstrom
Writer