Habitat
Wetlands with water-lilies and other floating vegetation, including freshwater marshes, inundated grasslands, flood-plains and river deltas with grasses and sedges, reedbeds, papyrus swamps, rice-fields, and thick vegetation (sedges, grasses and reeds) beside lakes, rivers, ponds and temporary pools.
Vagrant to Algeria, Comoros, Cyprus, Denmark, Eritrea, Finland, France, Germany, Greece (P), Israel, Italy, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Oman, Portugal, Sâo Tomé e Principe, Seychelles, Somalia, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Spain, St Helena, Swaziland, Tunisia, United Kingdom.
Senegal and Gambia east to Ethiopia and Somalia and south to South Africa, excluding arid SW; also Madagascar, Comoro Is, and (probably introduced) Mauritius.
Population
Estimated population is 25,000 - 1,000,000 (2010).
Status LC
Destruction and modification of wetlands (especially the loss of seasonally flooded habitats) through drainage, damming and grazing, and hunting are the main threats.
For more information see BirdLife International Species Factsheet.
Habits
Usually solitary, in pairs, or in family groups. In favourable conditions sometimes in large numbers.
Food
Omnivorous. Flowers and seeds of reeds and sedges, the seeds, stems and leaves of grasses and other marsh plants, unripe seedheads of water-lilies, and fruits of thorn bush, earthworms, molluscs, crustaceans, aquatic and terrestrial insects, spiders, fish eggs and small fish.
Allen's Gallinule (Porphyrio alleni) [XC96789]
by Mike Nelson from Kanondo pan, Zimbabwe (call)
Allen's Gallinule (Porphyrio alleni) [XC162133]
by Peter Woodall from Ankarafantsika National Park, Mahajanga Province, Madagascar (call)
Nest
A loose structure of reeds, sedges and other vegetation typically positioned in reeds, grasses or tangled vegetation at the waters edge and also in open marshes and rice-fields.
Subspecies
Sometimes placed in Gallinula or Porphyrula. Forms superspecies with Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus).
BirdLife International Species Factsheet