The Story
I photographed this juvenile Common Gallinule (Gallinula galeata) at the Córdoba wetland (Humedal de Córdoba) in Bogotá, Colombia in June 2017. It lives around well-vegetated marshes, ponds, canals and other wetlands in the Americas. It eats plant material and small aquatic animals, and its wide feet let it walk on lily pads. It was split from the common moorhen in 2011. The Córdoba wetland covers about 40 hectares in Bogotá’s Suba locality, on the Bogotá savanna. Of all the wetlands of Bogotá, Córdoba has the most bird species on record, 96 of them.
I took this with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600. IUCN lists the Common Gallinule as Least Concern, and Córdoba is one of Bogotá’s wetlands that together became a protected Ramsar site in 2018.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Common Gallinule (Gallinula galeata) belongs to the family Rallidae (Rails, Gallinules, and Coots) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2025). Source: IUCN Red List