Over the last couple of years of visiting the park, I've noticed a significant increase in the number of coots, delightful water birds with their black plumage, that distinctive white 'shield' on their foreheads (giving rise to the saying "as bald as a coot") and their white bills. Sometimes there are as many as sixty or seventy of them out on the lake, where they seem to co-exist peacefully with each other and with other water fowl except at the height of the breeding season when they can get a tad territorial, beating the water with their feathers.
The coot then, readily identifiable from its white blaze, is the largest member of the Rallidae family (which also comprises moorhens, crakes and water rails), and is much bigger when seen out of the water than one might suppose, more the size of a chicken. The French indeed call it informally la poule d'eau (water chicken), though its formal name is the foulque, derived from the Latin name fulica. There are ten species of coot worldwide and the commonest is our chap, fulica atra , the Eurasian coot. There are also various North American and South American varieties, one of which even sports a yellow shield. There was an eleventh, the Mascarene coot from Mauritius, but this followed its fellow islander the Dodo into extinction towards the end of the 17th century.
coot feathering |
I don't recall precisely when my love for our feathered friends began but it was probably when I was about nine years old. Several things conspired. At that time (early 1960s), Chivers jellies were sold in cardboard packets with pictures of birds on the back, something like twelve in the series, collect all twelve and then send off for a large print of your favourite one. I hated jelly (still do) but my Mum used to buy it for my Dad, so I pestered her to buy specific packets, and when eventually I'd got all twelve, I sent them off for a hand-tinted print of a chaffinch.
I'd also recently been bought my first camera, a Kodak Brownie 127. Before I'd acquired the full set of Chivers birds, I used to position the cut-outs in the privet hedge in our garden and photograph them with that Brownie camera. Weird, I know, fake bird pictures!
And then there was Arthur Ransome's 'Coot Club ', which I read at about the same time, and which made it feel cool to look out for the welfare of birds. 'Coot Club ' is a story about a group pf children living on the Norfolk Broads who have formed a vigilante gang to protect the nesting sites of coots from the townies who descend at week-ends and in the Easter holidays and who race about the waterways in motorboats with scant regard for the nesting coots or who think it acceptable to collect birds' eggs. Its pro-conservation message wrapped in an exciting adventure story was relatively ground-breaking for the time.
feet like anchovies |
Although they are mostly black, certainly as far as plumage is concerned, they do have red eyes and strong yellow legs which end in pale blue feet with long lobed toes, resembling anchovies. They are powerful swimmers and can also run well across water and on dry land, but their short, rounded wings mean they are not the best fliers, certainly not on a par with ducks or geese.
They are omnivorous feeders, cropping on surface algae or diving for weeds, fish and water insects, but they also graze on land for seeds, fruit and small live prey. They build large, bulky nests with a neat bowl. These can be anchored to vegetation in shallow waters (logs, reeds or similar) or they can be free-floating. The female will lay between six and ten eggs at the rate of one per day over a week or so and both male and female coots take turns to incubate the eggs which hatch about three weeks after being laid. The fuzzy chicks with their smoky plumage and red heads more resemble moorhens than coots, enough so to confuse W. B. Yeats who wrote about "feathered balls of soot" in 'Meditations in Time of Civil War'. Vigilance is required, as the terrapins in Stanley Park lake are quite partial to coot and moorhen eggs, and predatory birds and pike will happily carry off a stray cootlet.
There was a time in this country when adult coots were hunted for food. I quote: "young moorhen are very good eating but I would infinitely rather have a coot." There were traditional coot shoots at several large British wetlands right up until the 1950s, and somewhere the killing goes on, for it turns out there is a trade in dead coot feathers, supplying fly-fishing anglers who like to make their own flies. I quote again: "The feathers on the front of the coot's wings can be used as hackles on a range of traditional soft-hackled wet flies such as the ever-popular 'Waterhen Bloa '" and they cost £15 from stockists of fishing supplies. No wonder coots are occasionally capable of quarrelsome and aggressive behaviour if they feel so threatened!
coot flotilla |
Coot Fleet
General synopsis Admiral Coot: mainly fair,
wind westerly, veering northwest for a time,
force two, speed approx. at four to six knots
so small wavelets, crests glassy, no breaking.
Irish Sea for you. Cup of tea for me, maybe
with a shot of rum or piece of chocolate cake
to keep spirits up, bins trained eyes straining
to survey our fleet riding easy upon the lake
like warships in battle order, uniformly dark
drab grey all with strange white radar domes
and prows pointing into the flow, like Scapa
or Souda Bay, red-eyes alert, most definitely
not Pearl Harbour. Wild Coots at Poole your
admirable misquote about our pleasing array
of waiting rails, no hint they'll up and away
though this brisk glorious mid-day. Strength
in numbers of course, deterrent force against
all-comers, and my turn to be witty. Nobody
fucks with the baldies, I side-mouth, crumbs
of cake tumbling to the ground for sparrows
to pounce on. And the wind does swing some
forty-five degrees as foretold, whereon nine
and fifty synchronised sooty shapes re-orient
their white bills, resolute in their potent vigil.
* Stanley Park has been voted the UK's favourite park on three separate occasions, the last time being in 2022.
Thanks for reading, S ;-)
44 comments:
Splendid Steve. Coots are such characters. I loved the Wanderers quote.👏
Thanks for insightful coot knowledge and a cleverly crafted poem.
Interesting read
What a fascinating account and such an interesting idea for a poem. I'll never look at coots in quite the same way again.
Most enjoyable. Loved the review-of-the-fleet poem.
I always enjoy your bird blogs, this no exception. Did you take the coot pictures? I just wondered if that's what became of the budding 9 year old bird photographer. And I really like Coot Fleet.
Australian coots might look sweet, but they have a reputation as being the dirtbags of the waterbird world. They’re loud and aggressive and very territorial. They will fight with each other and with other species, particularly during the breeding season.
What a lovely blog from greensward, feather weather, cootlets etc to your latest poem. I'm charmed.
A great read. I like the way you've woven in those references to The Wild Swans At Coole. 👏
Wonder if they taste of fish!
Coots are so cute. I love those funny feet, a bit like clowns. 😉
I've never been a big fan of water birds but this was an enlightening read and a witty poem. ( I take it that's the shipping forecast at the beginning).
I too loved Coot Club as a child. How could anybody think of eating one? Well done with the poem.
Very good. I like the fleet metaphor. A fleet is also one of the collective nouns for coots, along with commotion, covert, flock, pod and raft. I think I like fleet the best. It's a nicely worked poem. 👍
It's a lovely blog and a delightful poem, and I have to confess I laughed aloud at the baldies quote. Very clever.
This was a great read. I can identify with coots, their nests are so messy! I loved the poem, so many interwoven elements.
That's class.
Arthur Ransome is one of my favourite children's authors. I loved reading him when I was young and I fought a long and eventually losing battle to keep his books on our shelves when I was a librarian. Well done with the poem. I've just read it again alongside The Wild Swans At Coole.
Well done. I think coots are lovable, so funny when they run on those weird feet. Shocking to read that pike eat cootlets though. I enjoyed your witty poem.
Actually quite big fellas when you see them out of water! Clever poem.👍
I like 'water chicken', a bit like moorhen I suppose, and I love coots. They are such gregarious creatures. You'll never see a fleet of moorhen(s). It's a charming poem too.
Coot shoots did indeed take place in Norfolk right up to the late 1950s. The Royal Family used to participate. Here is a link to an informative website: http://www.ludhamarchive.org.uk/coot.htm
Me again. Awful that trophy photo of dead coots. And Hickling Broad is only 20-odd miles from here.
Yes, a fleet of coots. That's excellent Steve.
I'm pleased to see your coot blog is making a bit of a splash. They are rather lovely birds and a little maligned in my opinion for standing up for themselves. It was a neat idea for a poem. The battleships analogy hadn't struck me before but it is a good one and Coot Fleet is wittily told.
That image of you as a boy putting cardboard cut-outs of birds in the hedge and photographing them. What a great blog and a lovely poem. 🤎
A good read and a clever poem. Did you take the coot photos?
A very nice blog. I like coots. They are cooler than ducks and I love the noise they make, a sort of muted honk. I never thought of them like a fleet of ships, that's interesting imagery.
Clever the imagery of the Coot Fleet. A delightful read.👏
They seem such lovable birds. I'm sure they don't mean to intimidate.
Bravo! A deterrence of coots? I loved the witty conceit of the poem.
Very good. That's a sweet story about your jelly packets. Coots are cute!
They are so distinctive with their white blazes and beaks. I enjoyed your imaginative and amusing poem.
I had no idea that bald as a coot came from this bird.
What a really good blog. Thank you.
What a well constructed and very good poem.
That's a splendid feat, water birds reimagined as a naval task force.
I found it a curious fact that coots are not very good at flying. They are birds - what happened there? Anyway, great blog and a fine poem.
I enjoyed this Steve, a really well-written piece. I'd read elsewhere that coots are gregarious birds. It had never occurred to me that part of the motivation was as a self-defence force!
Fabulous cootery.
A wonderful read. I've loved Arthur Ransome books since childhood. Did you know he was working on a thirteenth Swallows and Amazons novel, unfinished at the time of his death? His biographer Hugh Brogan published what existed of it as 'Coots In The North' in 1988.
There really was an Admiral Coote in the Royal Navy in the 19th century. I just looked it up. You probably knew that.
I want a copy of Arthur Ransome's Coot Club! This is a fascinating, engrossing blog, Steve. The poem has character, and I must read it again.
I quite like snow chickens myself (ptarmigan).
A Coot Shipping Forecast! Delightful!
Great read Steve! Enjoyed every minute of the Coots! Please take good care of yourself sorry to hear you are going through so much. I too had two emergency operations and sadly got COVID by the hospital, having treatment at home,nit will take time when I am my usual self propped up.
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