 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 one contemporary account (by Dubois) compared its size with that of a Réunion ibis while another (by Feuilley) compared it to a domestic chicken.Hume pointed out that the Réunion ibis would have been at most, similar to the extant African sacred ibis (including the tail), while chickens could be in length (the size of their ancestral, wild red junglefowl), and that there was therefore no contradiction.