Coots are a common sight on ponds, lakes and rivers around the UK. They are also found throughout mainland Europe, Asia, Australia and new Zealand and even some parts of Northern Africa. From a distance their most noticeable features are their almost jet black plumage and striking white beak which runs up to a white bulge across their foreheads. This is known as a frontal plate or frontal shield and this is where the term bald as a coot comes from. I’ll get onto the purpose of this shortly. If you get a closer view of a coot, you may also notice their 2 or I guess 4 other unusual features. Adult coots have dark red eyes and instead of having webbed or unwebbed feet, theirs are somewhere in between. They have fleshy lobes of skin coming from the sides of their toes which helps them to create more propulsion when paddling but also less resistance from the water when dragging their feet behind them. Coots are slightly larger than their cousin the moorhen and have a wingspan of around 75cm and can grow to weight of up to 800gramms.
With their skin feathered toes, coots are great swimmers and use this to their advantage when searching for food. They dive beneath the surface in search of small fish, aquatic invertebrates and vegetation to feed upon.
Spending their lives on or under water can give coots protection from some predators and an abundant source of food, but it also creates an issue when it comes to nesting and laying eggs. To solve this they either build a platform up out of the water in the shallows or attach their nest to living vegetation so that it floats above the waters surface. They begin the construction of this from February to late march when a pair will form and start to be very territorial to other coots and sometimes other species of waterfowl. With the nest complete and any rivals or incursions prevented, the female will lay between 5 and 7 lightly speckled olive coloured eggs that measure around 53milimetres in length. One egg is laid per day and incubation starts after the second egg is laid. This takes 3 weeks and means that the chicks can hatch out at daily intervals. When they do first emerge coot chicks are very different in appearance to their parents. They have dark red bases to their beaks, bald heads and fiery orange strands emerging from their otherwise grey to black fluff. It is thought that these brighter markings can demonstrate to the adults how healthy a chick is and if food becomes scarce in the first few days after hatching, the parents may choose to stop feeding or sometimes even kill the weaker chicks. After a week or two, the male and the female split the brood and take on full parental duties for only their half of the chicks. 5 to six weeks later the chicks are well grown, capable of flying. Coots will usually only nest once per year if they are successful at rearing their chicks but if their nest fails they can attempt a second or even third batch of eggs.
In the UK Coots don’t migrate in the winter but this isn’t the case across the globe. There are currently around 31,000 pairs of these birds in the UK and although their average lifespan is 5 years, the oldest bird on record was 15 years, 3 months and 13 days when it died in 1978.
#britishbirds #coot #birds
Footage and images used in this video were obtained using creative commons licences:
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