porphyrio poliocephallus
Apopka, Florida – Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive
Friday, March 28, 2025 – 7:35 am
In January, 2020, I went to Orlando with coworkers for a convention. My boss “graciously” allowed me to skip one single session to bird, so I rented a car and made a mad morning dash to Newton Park on Lake Apopka. I thought about sticking around for an additional day, but for whatever reason, I didn’t. I’ve regretted it ever since because I found out about the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive where a couple of birds, that would have been lifers for me at that time, are regularly seen.
When I planned my 2025 trip, I organized everything around my visit to the drive, which is only open Friday-Sunday. My remaining target bird was the Gray-headed Swamphen, an Asian species that escaped into the wild in the late 1990s and has established itself to the point that it is now countable.
The swamphen is a big, gangly rail that looks like a Purple Gallinule on steroids. I was only about a quarter mile along the drive when I spotted my first one. It was standing in the road, but scurried off into the marsh before I could get a decent photo. No worries. I soon saw another one on the road and this time I stopped an took photos before getting too close. Later, I saw one fly across a patch of open water and land in the reeds and a fourth one foraging in the reeds across an open marsh.
Basically, all of them were walking around picking at the ground like chickens, which probably accounts for its name. The heads of females are blue, the heads of males are gray, but I’m not sure what color I’d call the head on this one.
