The common gallinule can be found on all of our ponds. When the first edition of the guide was published, it was the common moorhen, but since then the old world and new world populations have been split into two species, and ours was renamed. It’s a member of the rail family and is locally known as the water chicken.
Strangely, it seems that it was first recorded on St. Martin in 1973, which is hard to imagine because they’re so common today.
