Callum Macgregor

A medium-sized water hen, very common close to water, from wetlands to urban ponds, with a very large distribution across Europe, West and South Asia, and Africa including the Sahel and Austral regions. The nominate subspecies occurs across Europe.

Season of assessment

B

Population trendDecreasing
Population size
(min-max, best estimate)		1790000-2670000,2150000
Red List categoryLC
Franks, S., Fiedler, W., Arizaga, J., Jiguet, F., Nikolov, B., van der Jeugd, Ambrosini, R, Aizpurua, O., Bairlein, F., Clark, J., Fattorini, N, Hammond, M., Higgins, D, Levering, H., Skellorn, W., Spina, F, Thorup, K. Walker, J., Woodward, I. and Baillie, S.R. (1) (2022) Online Atlas of the movements of European bird populations. https://migrationatlas.org EURING/CMS (1) Principal investigator
Map

Overall Connectivity for Common Moorhen

Populations in the North, Central and North-West move to the SW, especially towards the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Birds from the East, and some from Central Europe, do move more straight to the South, with a few links between south-eastern European Russia and the Middle East. There are almost no recoveries before 1960, and most data was obtained after 2000. There is a continuous decreasing number of recoveries with increasing distance to ringing sites, attesting a directional dispersal strategy rather than a true migratory pattern. There are some connexions between the British Isles and a coastal front from Denmark to northern France.

Recoveries by Condition for Common Moorhen

As for closely related rails, there is a large switch from mostly dead recoveries (70%) before 1990 to 95% of live recoveries after 1990, corresponding also to a huge increase in recovery numbers in the 2000s.

Annual Movements for Common Moorhen

Populations breeding in southern and western Europe are sedentary or show some short-distance dispersal during the winter. Populations from Poland eastwards are migratory, but are also those with the less ringing information, because of a low ringing effort in East Europe and Russia. Movements occur mainly in April and September for migratory populations and dispersive individuals. There is no available tracking data for that species.

Connectivity by Month by Region for Common Moorhen

Birds from the North are moving start to move S in September, returns start in March and occur mainly in April. The temporal pattern is similar for migrants from Central Europe, and for short distant movements of birds from the West. The few recoveries in North Africa have been obtained in January and February, for birds of West and North Europe.

Frédéric Jiguet

References

Statistics Map
N records N individuals N recoveries
Mapped data*
Total available data
*Mapped data include only distant (>= 50 km) recoveries