page_title: Réunion swamphen
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Réunion swamphen / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Takahe in Te Anau.
context_page_description: The Réunion swamphen, also known as the Réunion gallinule or oiseau bleu, is a hypothetical extinct species of rail that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Réunion. While only known from 17th and 18th accounts by visitors to the island, it was scientifically named in 1848, based on the 1674 account by Sieur Dubois. A considerable literature was subsequently devoted to its possible affinities, with current researchers agreeing it was derived from the swamphen genus Porphyrio. It has been considered mysterious and enigmatic due to the lack of any physical evidence of it existence.
  Described as entirely blue in plumage with a red beak and legs, and being the size of a Réunion ibis or chicken, which could mean 65–70 cm in length, the Réunion swamphen may have been similar to the takahe. While easily hunted, it was a fast runner and able to fly, though reluctantly. It may have fed on plant matter and invertebrates, as other swamphens, and was said to nest among grasses and aquatic ferns. It was only found on the Plaine des Cafres plateau, where it may have retreated to during the latter part of its existence, whereas other swamphens inhabit lowland swamps.
context_section_description: The Réunion swamphen was described as having entirely blue plumage with a red beak and legs, and is generally agreed to have been a large, terrestrial swamphen, with features indicative of reduced flight capability, such as larger size and more robust legs. There has been disagreement over the size of the bird, as Dubois' account compared its size with that of a Réunion ibis while that of the French engineer Jean Feuilley from 1704 compared it to a domestic chicken. Cheke stated in 1987 that Feuilley's account would indicate the bird was not unusually large, perhaps the size of a swamphen. Hume pointed out in 2019 that the Réunion ibis would have been 65–68 cm (26–27 in) at most, similar to the extant African sacred ibis (including the tail), while chickens could be 65–70 cm (26–28 in) in length (the size of their ancestral, wild red junglefowl), and that there was therefore no contradiction. The Réunion swamphen would thereby have been about the same size as the takahe.
  The first description of the Réunion swamphen is that of Dubois from 1674, which reads as follows:
  As big as the solitaires [Réunion ibis]; their plumage is entirely blue, the beak and the feet red and made like those of hens; they do not fly, but run extremely quickly, so that a dog has difficulty catching them in a chase; they are very good [to eat].
  The last definite account of the bird is that of the priest Brown from around 1730 (expanded from a 1717 account by Le Gentil):
  Towards the east of the island there is a little plateau up a high mountain called the Plaine des Cafres where one finds a large blue bird whose colour is very striking. It resembles a wood-pigeon [in colouration]. It flies but rarely and always barely above the ground, but it walks with surprising speed. The inhabitants have never called it anything other than oiseau bleu; its flesh is quite good and keeps well.
  Olson stated the comparison to a "wood pigeon" was a reference to the common wood pigeon, implying that Brown described it as smaller than Dubois did, while Hume suggested it could be the extinct Réunion blue pigeon. The 1708 account of Hébert does not add much information about the bird, though he qualified its colouration as "dark blue".
  While the bird is only known from written accounts, reconstructions of it appear in Rothschild's 1907 book Extinct Birds, and Hachisuka's 1953 book The Dodo and Kindred Birds. Rothschild stated he had the Dutch artist John Gerrard Keulemans depict it as intermediate between the takahe and Aptornis, which he thought its closest relatives. Fuller found Frohawk's illustration to be a well-produced work, though almost entirely conjectural in depicting it like a slimmed-down takahe.
caption: The Réunion swamphen was possibly similar to the takahe, and was at times thought to be closely related
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