During January (winter), April﹣May (spring) and October﹣November (autumn) in 2011, scan sampling and focal sampling methods were used to study the non-breeding season behaviors of the Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio) in Eryuan Xihu wetland (26°00′﹣26°01′N, 100°02′﹣100°03′E) at the elevation of 1 970 m asl, Dali, Yunnan Province (Fig. 1). Using instantaneous scanning method, we observed the behaviors for 35 entire days in winter, spring and autumn with the help of binoculars and stopwatches, for details of our observation, see Fig. 2. Seven types of behaviors were defined as eating, searching, resting, grooming, alert, locomotion and others. To calculate the diurnal rhythm, we combined eating and searching as foraging in observation of scan sampling due to difficulties in instant discrimination (Fig. 3). Foraging was the dominating behavior throughout non-breeding seasons, with its peaks occurred at dawn and dusk, and low ebbs found at 14:30 in autumn (56.56%), 12:30 in winter (55.61%) and 11:00 in spring (55.80%). Resting peaked at 12:30 (26.79%) in autumn, yet increased throughout the daytimes in winter, and a low ebb occurred at 13:30 (14.64%) in spring. The time budgets of primary behaviors were calculated using focal sampling (Fig. 4), and showed significant differences among seasons (Table 1). Eating was observed for the highest frequent in autumn (72.54%) that followed by spring (56.78%) and winter (44.59%). Conversely, searching was the highest in winter (19.87%), followed by spring (9.36%) and autumn (3.03%). During winter, the Purple Swamphens in Xihu wetland invested more time on searching and less on eating than previous studies in respond to low temperature and shortage of food (Table 2). In spring, which before the breeding season, grooming was the highest (15.84%), then reduced in autumn (11.10%). Alert and locomotion were fluctuated due to the agricultural activities of local people. Our results indicated that, in order to adapt the seasonal changes of weather and food conditions, the behavioral strategies of the Purple Swamphen were variable in different seasons and locations, which allowed the expansion of this species to the highlands in North-west Yunnan Province.