The Purple Swamphen has in recent years flown from Norfolk Island to the
smaller Phillip Island to the South. Local ornithologists and Norfolk
Island National Park staff have consistently reported it as a
significant predator of the eggs and chicks of seabirds.
Con
Esme Barker and bruce Ramsay wrote:
This morning as I was running around Pt Hut Pond, I disturbed a Purple
Swamphen which ran from the shortish grass it had been walking across
towards the taller sedge-type growth at the waters edge. I was a bit
surprised to see a small form dangling from the Swamphen's bill and it
took me a second or two to realise it was a duckling. It was either
freshly dead or close to death as it was just flopping and swinging
side to side limply as the bird ran for cover and disappeared from view.
A quick googling using the terms "purple swamphen" and food found a
Museum of Australia Fact Sheet which says, "will also eat ducklings
when it can catch them". (None of my limited reference books at home
make mention of ducklings as a food source).
On Monday at the same spot there was a pair of Australian Wood Ducks
with one duckling visible and yesterday the same pair (I assume) was
there again, this time with 2 small ducklings.
Although I neither saw the Swamphen kill nor devour the duckling and I
am unaware of how often this is observed in the ACT (or Australia, for
that matter), I think that what I saw was most probably an example of
the predatory, carnivorous behaviour mentioned in the Museum Fact Sheet.
Bruce
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