Mowbray Version: 1. Sign in to see your badges. More details: Guide to key entries Standard abbreviations and symbols. Account navigation Account navigation Introduction. Revision History. Originally Appeared in. Birds of North America logo. The white beak and shield on its face give it away, as do its red eyes. Coots live all over the world. At the beginning of August, Coots are looking for a mate and pairing up. They breed right up until February and can raise more than one clutch of eggs during this time, provided they have enough food.
When a Coot wants to attract a partner, it chases its desired Coot around on the water, calls, and strikes the water with its wings. They spend most of the day gazing to each others eyes. The male [I think] swims towards me clucking when I get home from work seeking a handout. I have even seen him face down a gull,the local badboys. I look forward to their arrival every fall and miss them all summer. You have to live around these kids to understand how stunning they are.
We have had fewer winter coots in San Diego this year. Five of my coots did not return on migration. They are compelling little animals that will study your face, and if you are nice to them will remember you and form lifelong bonds.
More info is available on my website. This link goes to a movie I recently made. It shows Mr. Beaky at his morning bath and his lovely bride, Monday, at breakfast. I have been watching a coot devour a bolus of something that was as big as his head. I live on Lake Ontario near Rochester, NY, and there has been a lone coot out there for a few days now. I have wondered for years what that crazy looking bird was and started carrying around my camera and low and not behold, I never saw one again.
I finally asked a friend and he said it was a strange duck too. We have a friendly coot who hears my voice and then quickly comes over for a snack. What is the best thing for me to give him? I know they like grass and weeds. What I would like to know is if they also eat fish? We have many different arguments about Coots and fish eating. Can someone solve this argument for us please….
Michael: Coots are omnivorous and will pretty much anything like us really and small fish are taken as food items, yes. Hi, I am currently raising a rescued coot-who we promptly named Bert for his ugliness!
I was wondering if anyone had any tips? At the moment we are trying to find out whether Bert is a girl or boy we hope he is a boy ,otherwise he will have to be called Bertlene!
Now though Bert is quite cute and loves cuddles! I also wanted to add that Coots love to eat grapes-yum yum. He loves a rub under his chin and back. He has the largest green feet ever! We might have to rename him Bigfoot…. Can anyone answer please? The other night there were 3 shotgun blasts out on the lake with 2 men racking in about 50 dead coots. In the morning one survived, made it to shore until it was picked up and killed by a gardner. This was horriffic.
Find the special agent in charge of your area. Call Hi Cliff; Thanks for your info. Hopefully someone will call me back. No help. I did talk to the Fish and Game prior to your e-mail. I talked to the management of Mission Hills Country Club who state they have a license to do this. My neighbors could care less, some of them even cheering. There will be a HOA meeting in Feb. So sad.! We had problems like this last year, but made the mistake of not contacting the US Fish and Wildlife Service first.
You can read about the lessons we learned when protected birds were being exterminated here:. Thank you Cliff for all your help. I did get a call back from the Fish and Wildlife, a Mrs. Grasper who has looked into Mission Hills Country Club. She told me that they did have a depredation permit. I did read beakycoot. Thank you for sharing. Regards, Chris. Thanks for giving it a try, sounds like you did your best.
Thanks for allowing me to post my response. Most people have at best a naive concept of how government and nonprofit agencies work in the case of wildlife. These are just the facts, and they have been hard to uncover over the past seven years. If you want my opinion, that would take a bit longer. I agree with everyone that coots are fascinating birds… in fact, so fascinating that I just completed my dissertation studying them.
Some fun facts about coots: 1 The chicks are world champions in terms of colorful juveniles. They have bright red beaks, bright red bald heads and red and orange plumage until they are about 2 weeks old. The parents use a combination of aggression towards older chicks and favoritism toward youngest of the surviving chicks, which then catch up to their older siblings in size before fledging.
And there are so many more fascinating things about them… they are indeed a great study animal for ecology, evolution and behavior. I have just spotted a coot here in laughlin nevada at the southern california edison plant. Is this an odd spot for a coot? Thanks for responding…. I have never seen one and just thought it was so odd and odd looking. Is it normal for them to be alone?
And really not too close to any body of water. Coots need about fifty yards of open water to take off and land. I would guess that your coot had been injured or weakened by starvation and separated from the other migrating coots. It not appear to be injured but weakened by starvation possibly, it stayed in the same place for about 3 hours outside my office window…when someone came by to see what kind of bird it was this is before we knew he is back now outside the office nestled under a shrub and sitting or laying is it possible it is a female and its getting ready to lay some eggs?
And if it is weakend what should we do? We are thinking we should call Nevad wild life. If the bird is sitting, it is too weak to stand, and probably ready to die. The bird needs to get warm and get some food and water. I use Cheez-It crackers and a coffee cup with fresh water for a start. I suspect that there is nothing you can do within the law to keep this bird alive for long. Most rescue agencies here refuse to come out and pick up animals, and if you handle this bird without the federal permit, you will be in violation of US Code Title 16, chapter 7.
I usually tell people to do whatever you can where you are to save a life, and let your conscience be your guide. In my experience these laws are almost unenforceable. Whatever you have will do to see if the bird can eat. Cheez-its are good because they have oil fat in them and you can sail them like a Frisbee.
Rice pudding is a favorite since it has fat, sugar, and carbohydrates, and the birds love it. The only other thing would be to take the bird to a freshwater pond, where it may have a chance to survive. Of course, you would probably be breaking all sorts of laws by releasing or abandoning a live animal….
I will see what I can take out there…taking it to a pond is not an option unfortuneatley, so when I go out there the bird will not be aggressive right? Usually if a bird is injured or sick it will run away from the rest of the flock and be difficult to catch.
Coots can make faithful companions because of their tendency to flock together with other species. However, if you grab a coot and hold onto it, the bird will be terrified of you. But if you can get down on your knees and hand feed a coot so the bird can see your face clearly, the bird may form a lifelong bond with you and act like a domestic pet.
Thanks for all the input this has been an interesting day learning about this odd bird! The more I read about it they are pretty cool. I will check back and give a report tomorrow. Well no sign of my bird this morning…. She didnt eat any of the crackers and looks like none of the water either. Hopefully she is ok…there are alot of coyotes here I dont want to think the worst.
Hopefully the coot was able to get up and flying. Coots migrate at night, so she was probably gone soon after you left. Thanks for passing along the interesting story. Its coat is an indigo to black and its bill is bright red tipped in white, legs almost an irridescent green, a white patch on either side of its tail feathers.
Can you help with its name? How long do baby coots stay in the nest for? I have been watching a pair of coots sitting on their nest for a couple of weeks, but yesterday I walked a different way with the dog and today when I went past the nest the coots were gone! Could the babies have hatched and swam off in the space of 48 hours?
I am concerned that someone has purposefully scared them away as the nest is in the middle of a dock where a big swimming competition is taking place tomorrow…. Page covers the care and development of the young coot.
When the young coot is six hours old, it is quite buoyant and will climb in and out of the nest. When the nests are disturbed, every young goes over the side into the water to swim to cover.
Any of the young that are less than 15 to 20 minutes old are not yet buoyant and generally drown. Unfortunately much of the academic papers written are hindered by prejudice and conflict of interest. The authors who submit papers to these journals pay to have them published, and get to pick who reviews them.
The birds will eventually learn to accept you, and you will learn to recognize them as individuals. The Port manages hundreds of acres of public parks and wetlands.
I live in Cape Town South Africa. I walk every day and feed the ducks in the pond. Amongst then is a pair of Coots who have already raised a clutch of 4 eggs.
They are extremely good and protective parents and raised them until they flew the coop. Unfortunately 1 of them got a huge fishing lure with fishing line stuck in the foot, he or her were so tired from trying to get loose that we were able to catch him and remove it.
After 2 weeks he was still hopping around so we caught him again only to disover another piece of fish hook stuck in the joint. We took it out and took it to the vet who gave him an antibiotic injection. I have put him back where we found him and hopefully he will survive even if he hops on 1 foot. I have to try and give him a bit of antiobiotic in a piece of bread for 4 days.
Fortunately he does feed when I feed the ducks. Hold thumbs. Lesley, you are fortunate to live in a country where you can take a wild bird to a veterinarian without breaking the law or getting the bird killed for your efforts. Coots are unusual in their egalitarian tendency to flock with other species, and quickly form bonds with humans. I assume that you have Eurasian coots over there, and it would be interesting to know if they behave the same as our coots.
I just put up the Coot News for September, and you can read about the horrors we have over here at beakycoot. A woman brought me a small Coot that she had found about a week ago. I have been trying to feed it since. I discovered that it much prefers living things like mealworms and crickets. How much feed does this little bird need and what else will it eat? I am not aware of anyone who has successfully raised a baby coot. I suppose the basic guidelines common to all newly hatched chicks as found at pigeons.
You want to feed as much protein as possible insects or dog food and avoid choking the bird with food items that are too large to swallow.
Use commercially raised feeder insects available from pet shops, and cut off the heads of live worms before feeding until the bird learns to do this.
Superworms do bite and are dangerous to juvenile birds. Marshside This fantastic wetland site is located north of Southport town centre and has some of the best wildlife in the region. Lytchett Fields The reserve has seen more than thirty species of wading birds.
Arne Heathland home to more than species. Get out, get busy and get wild! Fun factoids for all the family Find out more about the nature and wildlife outside your window. Eurasian coot. Coot adult. Coot juvenile.
Key information All-black and larger than its cousin, the moorhen, the Eurasian coot has a distinctive white beak and 'shield' above the beak which earns it the title 'bald'. What they eat: Vegetation, seeds, snails and insect larvae.
Measurements: Length: cm Wingspan: cm Weight: g. UK breeding is the number of pairs breeding annually.
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