The Common Gallinule is a marsh bird that looks like a cross between a duck, a coot, and a chicken. Slate-gray with a brownish back, it is instantly marked by a candy-red bill tipped in yellow and a matching red frontal shield on the forehead, with a jagged white stripe along each flank and a flick of white under the tail. It swims buoyantly, pumping its head as it goes, and also clambers over floating vegetation and through the reeds on long toes, sometimes climbing up cattail stems.
Formerly lumped with an Old World species under the name "Common Moorhen," the Common Gallinule breeds in freshwater marshes and ponds with a mix of open water and emergent plants across southern and central Michigan. It feeds on aquatic plants, seeds, insects, and snails, foraging at the water's edge and among the vegetation, and gives a variety of loud, laughing, cackling calls. Loss of marsh habitat has made it local, and it is a colorful prize to find picking its way along a reedy pond edge.
Feeds on aquatic plants, seeds, insects, snails, and other invertebrates, foraging while swimming, walking on floating vegetation, and picking along the marsh edge. It takes both plant and animal food, gleaning from the water's surface and from emergent plants rather than diving.
It was formerly lumped with an Old World species as the "Common Moorhen." The New World birds were later recognized as a separate species, the Common Gallinule, though the two look very similar.
The gallinule has a red bill and forehead shield and bold white stripes along its flanks, while the coot has a white bill and shield and lacks the flank stripes. Both swim in marshes, but the coot is chunkier and grayer overall.
In freshwater marshes and ponds that have both open water and emergent vegetation, mainly in southern and central Michigan. It has become local with the loss of marsh habitat.
Chicks are sooty black with a red bill shield, and juveniles turn dull brownish-gray with a whitish throat and a dark bill, losing the adult's red-and-yellow bill entirely until the following spring.
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