The Contented Naturalist

One of my absolute favorite birds showed up at the park this winter: an American Coot (Fulica americana). They seem like a fairly plain bird, until you get a look at their amazing feet!

The first picture in the gallery above is zoomed in on the best shot I could get of the coot walking on some ice one morning. Look at those crazy lobed toes! The cool thing about coots is they swim like ducks, but don’t have webbed feet. Instead, those lobes spread out and have a similar effect to paddle the water.

A lot of birds have specialized feet– the long toes of the Great Blue Heron so it can walk on mud, for example, or the sharp talons of hawks and eagles. But I think coot feet are the weirdest looking and that makes them my favorite. (If you haven’t noticed on here already, I enjoy weird and unusual things in nature!)

When the coot is walking around, the wide toes also help it walk on floating vegetation. Of course, there is no floating vegetation in my area this time of year– some of the photos above show the coot walking on ice! But if you saw a coot down in Florida, you might see it balancing lightly on aquatic plants.

We got to watch the coot at Kenilworth for several days. Unfortunately, it didn’t stick around for the Christmas Bird Count on December 20th– on eBird the last checklist including the coot was on December 14. That’s still count week, though, so it might get an asterisk for this year’s count.

We usually take at least two walks around the park per day, once in the morning as we open up, and once in the afternoon/evening before we lock up. Most of us are either dedicated birders or are learning to be– so we were all thrilled watching the coot as long as it stuck around. It’s not often seen at our park, and especially not in the wintertime. It easily made my list of the top 10 birds of the year for Kenilworth. You can see that list here.

What are some of your best birding experiences? Do you have a favorite species? Let me know (or even boast, if you’ve seen a rarity) in the comments!