- Do you have questions about birds, bugs, bees, butterflies or other wildlife? Send your questions to Wild Things and we will try to find the answers.
The American coot (Fulica americana) is a strange-looking bird. It has a head similar to a duck, a body similar to a chicken, and feet like nothing else. It does not have webbed feet like many other water birds; instead it has fleshy lobes that help it navigate on land and water. The lobes push it through the water when swimming or diving, then fold back when feet are lifted. The coot can stand with ease on top of lily pads, swim and dive or walk and run on land, mud, ice or grass. Let’s see a duck try this!
The coot spends time on water diving or dabbling for food. But it also spends time in grassy areas such as lawns, parks and golf courses. It uses its strange-looking feet to help become airborne when it flies: To take off, it runs across the water’s surface for a long distance, splashing and flapping its wings furiously. Although awkward looking, this method works and the bird becomes airborne.
Male coots use their feet to fight. They lean back so their backside is in the water and use their feet as weapons to claw at other males. They can seriously injure other coots or predators with their feet.
The coot has garnered many nicknames because of its behaviors: a mud hen, a marsh hen, a blue Peter, a spatterer or a pouldeau (poule d’eau means “water hen”). In the late 1300s, the word coot denoted any diving waterfowl. By 1766, it had come also to refer to a silly or foolish person. Today the term is often used to refer to a harmless, simple person, as in an old coot. When observing this awkward-looking bird, it is easy to understand how the word meaning transitioned from birds to humans.
According to Mass Audubon, coots breed in fresh water in Canada and the West. In the 1960s some coots began to breed at Plum Island and Great Meadows in Concord – though with Massachusetts at the edge of their breeding range, they seem to have retreated from these areas.
Breeding coots like marshy areas with cattails and similar marshy plants. They build a floating nest that they secure to vegetation. Females lay eggs in May and incubate them for about three weeks. The hatchlings are unmistakable: They have orange heads and red beaks. Researchers tried clipping the red feathers and learned adult coots favor chicks with the brightest red feathers, which tend to be the smallest and youngest chicks. Parents feed these preferred chicks the most food and protect them from their larger siblings.
After breeding season in the fall, it is not unusual to see migratory coots in our area. They visit ponds and lakes but stay away from the marshes they preferred when they were breeding. Many of these migratory coots travel farther south as the weather becomes harsher, but a few may overwinter near open water.
Long ago, coots could be seen on Fresh Pond, but hunters pursued them relentlessly. Ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush estimated that hunters slaughtered millions in the early 20th century. Coot shooting was even reported in the newspaper. According to the Cambridge Chronicle of Oct. 29, 1904:
Patrolman Fred Ellis wound up his vacation, this week, with several days of coot shooting at Annisquam [Gloucester], with John Cook, driver of the station two patrol wagon. They had great success.
Ornithologist William Brewster participated in and described the hunts at Fresh Pond. (Binoculars were not widely available at the time, so people studied birds by killing them.)
For four or five years (from 1867 to 1871) … I followed the morning shooting at Fresh Pond rather closely. It began early in September, when the first Teal, Wood Ducks and Mud-hens arrived from the North, and was at its best during the month of October … It was necessary to be early on the ground, – or rather water, – and, as we lived nearly a mile from the pond, we were accustomed to start an hour or more before daybreak and to make our way, as best we could in the darkness, to the place where our boats were kept … On reaching the boats, … we pushed off and rowed briskly across the pond. … With the first unmistakable signs of daybreak … the Ducks began to appear. … If, after thoroughly reconnoitering the pond, they discovered nothing to alarm them, they would alight well out towards the middle, sending up jets of flashing spray as their heavy bodies struck the smooth surface. … When, as occasionally happened, two or three good-sized flocks appeared the same morning, there was plenty of sport for everyone, and the reports of the heavily charged guns, coming in quick succession from different parts of the pond, were heard at places as far distant as Harvard Square. Indeed, the firing was so rapid and incessant at times as to suggest that of a brisk skirmish, but, as six or eight shots were often required to kill a single bird, the total bag was not so great as the noise indicated. In fact, it was exceptional for more than fifteen or twenty Ducks to be killed in a single morning, although I have known the number to reach forty or fifty. … On an average probably over half of the Ducks that settled in the pond were killed …
With the shooting at Spy and the Mystic Ponds I had no personal experience, but it was reported to be quite as good as that at Fresh Pond …
As a natural result of the constant and ever increasing persecution just described, most of the waterfowl had deserted Fresh Pond when it was taken for a city park in 1884.
Today, we might see American coots at local watering holes in the winter. The birds like open water, however, so if a pond freezes over completely, the birds will go elsewhere.
Have you taken photos of our urban wild things? Send your images to Cambridge Day, and we may use them as part of a future feature. Include the photographer’s name and the general location where the photo was taken.
Jeanine Farley is an educational writer who has lived in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She enjoys taking photos of our urban wild things.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.