Urban birds
Our Coots have adapted to city life so completely that it’s now difficult to imagine urban areas without them
David Lindo explains how our Coots have adapted to city life so completely that it’s now difficult to imagine urban areas without them
Like the ubiquitous Mallard, the Coot is a staple of most reasonably sized and bigger waterbodies, as well as rivers and canals. As familiar as they are, I am certain that this ‘social’ rail initially made itself onto many a prepubescent beginner birder’s list noted as a black duck or simply duck. I know that my great friend, writer and TV producer Stephen Moss, fell into that very same trap as a child birder, pointing at black blobs on his local suburban reservoir from the comfort of his pram. One could be forgiven for thinking of Coots as ducks as they share the same general outline, but of course, a close-up view should immediately put you straight.
Coots are strange birds when you think about it. They belong to the rail family, although look and behave very differently from a classic rail like the Water Rail ie. secretly sneaking around in the middle of reedbeds. None of that. It is to be seen, bold as brass and in your face, in the middle of a lake and even, in exceptional circumstances, bobbing around on the sea. Unlike Moorhens, they tend to shun small ponds. During the winter, they can gather in areas of water sometimes in quite large concentrations.
Our Coot, also known as the
Eurasian Coot, is one of 11 coot species within the greater rail family and most of which are to be found in the Americas. They all share the slaty-grey/black plumage with variants on bill, undertail and leg colour. All are roughly the same size with the Giant Coot of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru being a few inches bigger. Coots are closely related to Moorhens, another rail that doesn’t mind parading in public in urban areas.
City slickers
Eurasian Coots are to be found throughout Europe, Asia,
Africa and in Australia, where it is also known as the Australian Coot.
I was quite surprised to watch these birds in
Darwin, thinking at first that they were a different species. They have also recently spread to New
Zealand. Coots have adapted to the urban environs with such aplomb that it is often difficult to imagine them in any other situation outside of a city.
Where common, they are not above muscling in on the ducks for food scraps thrown in their general direction. Many of us will even have experiences of them coming to feed from the hand as I did as a kid, while walking the concrete shores of the lake at St James’s Park, in the shadow of Buckingham Palace, central London.
Pugnacious, they are often to be seen settling breeding season territorial disputes by indulging in a splashy flurry of lashing lobe-toed feet as they furiously boot at each other while leaning back on the water. They famously build their bulky nests on the water’s edge, incorporating any piece of flotsam and other human rubbish into the structure.
Their clutch contains six to 10 eggs, and when the chicks hatch, they are adorable little things. They look like little ugly old men, dark bodied and replete with reddish bald pates. Early life is not bliss though. Most die within the first 10 days of life, with starvation being the main cause, although I have seen them being taken by Marsh Harriers. Coot parents are brutal in times of famine. They will peck at the begging chick until the begging stops and the youngster will eventually die owing to lack of nourishment.
Bald as a coot
Looking at young Coots dutifully swimming after their parents on an urban canal is the epitome of family life and undoubtedly a beguiling sight. It is hard not to think that the expression ‘bald as a coot’ was a reference to the chicks’ ‘Benjamin Button’ start in life – born old and getting younger as they grow up. But it’s not the case. Did you know there were once two common phrases involving this bird: queer as a coot and bald as a coot? The former expression has now vanished from popular parlance and referred to people being odd or strange as the birds themselves were deemed as being foolish; silly coot. The bald as a coot phrase has been around since 1430 and was in reference to people who looked like Coots ie. bald at the front of their heads. The word bald derives from the old English word ‘bala’ which means white patch, that the bird’s white frontal plate resembles. This shield stands out against the dark head when held low in displays of aggression, coupled with erecting the neck feathers in a ruff and arching the wings.
I will never forget doing some research for an Alan Titchmarsh series a few years ago. My mission was to locate night-singing Robins, with a camera crew alongside me around the deserted streets of Notting Hill, west London at the ungodly hour of 3am. It was surprisingly hard to find any singing Robins, largely because it was pouring with rain throughout the night.
But I remember hearing a weird flight call and looking up to see a Coot flying low over the urban rooftops. Typically, for a member of the rail family, Coots do not possess the long wings of a classic migratory bird yet, like other rails, they do travel. Indeed, they are fairly migratory across parts of their Asian range. They are occasionally picked up by birders recording nocturnal bird migration. They utter a curious nasal trumpeting during these night time forays, which is not normally noted during other times of the day.