Records of the Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio) from the Czech Republic: a review

ABSTRACT Standard works on the avifauna of the Czech Republic list four records of the Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio). My revision of these records shows that the specimen allegedly collected at Jaroslavice in 1957 or 1967 was purchased directly from a bird-keeper, that the 1884 record from Nové Hrady is best treated as an escapee of the nominotypical subspecies P. p. porphyrio, and that the records from the Žehuňský pond (1905) and Nesyt pond (1910) are best treated as escapees of P. p. madagascariensis. I thus suggest moving the Purple Swamphen from the list of the native avifauna of the Czech Republic to category E (escapes).