Remembering Ludo, remembering purple gallinules

I remember as if it was yesterday the excitement of seeing my first purple gallinule on a bend of the Ribeira de São Lourenço at Ludo, Portugal on 27th September 1992. I got up at first light and drove along a rough track with no satnav to guide me and no clear idea where I was going except a brief reference in an old book. I parked the car and could see my destination about 200m away, a rickety hide on stilts overlooking the river, surrounded by reeds in the middle of Ria Formosa. 

To get into the hide I had to battle through dense vegetation which made it seem like nobody had been there for years, and then climb up a metal ladder. I entered through a trap door and I could feel the hide swaying as I entered it. On closing the trap door, which I had to do for fear of falling out, I opened the window and found that there was a mist over the river which was packed with coots, gadwall and mallard. After a while the mist had cleared a bit, and suddenly I saw a large dark bird fly across the water and crash into the reeds on the other side, and later I saw another eating reeds by holding them in its ridiculous feet. 

Ribeira de São Lourenço, September 1992

At the time this seemed a remarkable sighting of a species which I thought of as the holy grail of European birding, and a bird which I thought would be very skulking and difficult to see. Two days later that myth was exploded when I found another three walking on the greens of a golf course at Vilamoura, and ever since then I've done very well for the species, even seeing one in the UK in 2016. 

Ribeira de São Lourenço, September 1992

The hide at Ludo is now sadly long gone and I don't imagine that anybody goes there these days specifically for purple gallinule because they can be seen far more easily in many other places. Even the name purple gallinule has gone, though I still use it for old time's sake, having been split into several species with western swamphen now the preferred name for the European birds. In Australia and New Zealand I've seen many Australian swamphens, which are also known as Pukeko in Moari, whilst in India and Kuwait I've seen a third species, grey-headed swamphen. At the time though, we just had purple gallinule and that memory is one on the most evocative of my birding life.

For the avoidance of doubt, this hide was not on the same site as the current São Lourenço bird hide at Quinta do Lago. The location of the hide in the photograph was on the river just east of the saltworks, a good 2km east of the existing hide.