GREEN-BACKED GALLINULE
Porphyrio Madagascariensis
Arabic, Digmeh
Whole plumage ultramarine blue shading into black, and on the back shading into bluish-green; white under-tail; frontal and bill blood-red, as are legs and feet; claws black; eye, deep crimson-brown. Total length, 18 inches.
WE have included this bird, as it is perhaps as handsome as any in all Egypt, but it may be questioned whether many of our readers will come across it, for it lives in dense reed beds which grow in the large lakes of the Delta and Fayoom, and rarely quits them for the waters of the Nile. Our own Waterhen, or Moorhen, is a sort of near cousin of this bird, but whereas our bird always gives the impression of being animated and cheery, this Egyptian Gallinule somehow looks depressed in spite of its brilliant plumage; and when it walks, it does so with no indecent haste, but slowly lifts one leg whilst the long toes hang loosely, and then gently places it down on the ground, all the while holding its head and body nearly perpendicularly, whilst, when not taking this strenuous exercise, it
sits with rounded shoulders on some stump or dead herbage by the hour together. As its food seems to consist almost entirely of the inner and soft parts of the shoots of reeds and other water-plants amongst which it lives all its days, it does not have to make any special effort to obtain food, and conceivably it may be one of those birds which are on a slow downward grade towards extinction. There can be little doubt but that the matter of food-supply has led many birds to alter their methods of life. In some cases, finding an abundance of food ever ready to hand, the use of the wings was abandoned, and with the inevitable result that just as they ceased to fly so the wings ceased growing, till at last they became flightless birds and at the mercy of each and every enemy that might attack them. It may be that thinking on these things has made the bird melancholy and depressed; but nothing can save it but “bucking up” and using its powers. Mr. Erskine Nicol told me how once, when out shooting, he saw one in a cornfield near a stack; he went towards it and the bird ran behind the stack; when he followed, it would not leave the friendly shelter, but by simply running round and round always kept safe. Mr. Nicol at last got tired of this useless chase and thought out a plan of campaign. Starting faster than ever, he ran round after the bird, and then suddenly turned and ran round the opposite way, when he met the melancholy Gallinule full face; and so flustered it that it left the stack and flew at right angles away, giving a possible shot, which was taken advantage of. On another occasion one was seen swimming in a miserable little duck-pond outside a village, tenanted by tame ducks, and the Gallinule absolutely refused to leave the sheltering society of these farmyard birds. Both these incidents seem to point to the same sort of method of life: “just sit tight, don’t fly into the open, risk nothing in the outside world, there are unknown dangers”: so it may be that this bird will sit, and sit, all humped up in its reed jungle till at last it loses the power of flight altogether; and then, before long, it will certainly fall a prey to some force or enemy which it has no power of resisting or escaping from. Mr. J. H. Gurney has also written of this bird, that just in the early morning or towards sunset he has seen it leave the shelter of these great reed-beds, but keeping quite close thereto, and at the least sign of danger running back to them. Seldom or never has he seen it take even a flight of a few yards. Along with its vegetable food it takes a certain number of small aquatic insects, and when this food cannot be obtained it is not averse to good hard grain of any kind. It lays six to eight eggs, which are ruddy-brown spotted with dark purple-brown.