We went to Indian Riverside Park yesterday in the late afternoon. But why did I take so many pictures of birds! Oh well, because I love them. Here they are…

Woot! it’s a Coot!

I have never photographed and IDed an American Coot, until now!

Duck, Mottled.

Little Blue Heron, a grownup in its inky dark plumage.

Snowy Egret.

Standing still.

That ol’ coot.

You’ll find coots eating aquatic plants on almost any body of water. When swimming they look like small ducks (and often dive), but on land they look more chickenlike, walking rather than waddling.

The pond in the park was clearly the avian place to be.

White Ibises, a coot and a Little Blue Heron.

Also a few Cattle Egrets.

A brief kerfuffle among the Mottled Ducks.

Then all was well again.

Compared to other species of ducks, pair formation occurs early, with nearly 80% of all individuals paired by November. Breeding starts in January, continuing through to July and usually peaking in March and April.

The male has a yellow bill, the female orange.

Coots are tough, adaptable waterbirds. Although they are related to the secretive rails, they swim in the open like ducks and walk about on shore, making themselves at home on golf courses and city park ponds.

Worth a read from Audubon.org The Sketch… The American Coot: A Tough-Love Parent.

Bills can be swords, reminds the Cattle Egret.

Cattle Egrets have broad, adaptable diets: primarily insects, plus other invertebrates, fish, frogs, mammals, and birds. They feed voraciously alone or in loose flocks of up to hundreds. Foraging mostly on insects disturbed by grazing cattle or other livestock, they also glean prey from wetlands or the edges of fields that have been disturbed by fire, tractors, or mowing machinery. Grasshoppers and crickets are the biggest item on their menu, which also includes horse flies, owlet moths and their larvae, cicadas, wolf spiders, ticks, earthworms, crayfish, millipedes, centipedes, fish, frogs, mice, songbirds, eggs, and nestlings.

Another place birds find food in the park is from people. I was across the pond and couldn’t see what she was feeding them. The dogs were doing an amazing job of ignoring the birds… for treats?

Another member of the Rallidae family (Rails, Galllinules and Coots): the Common Gallinule.

The Common Gallinule inhabits marshes and ponds from Canada to Chile. Vocal and boldly marked with a brilliant red shield over the bill, the species can be quite conspicuous. It sometimes uses its long toes to walk atop floating vegetation. This species was formerly called the Common Moorhen and is closely related to moorhen species in the Old World.

Whoa, those toes!

A couple of nonnatives, Egyptian Geese, were enjoying the feeding from the ladies with the dogs.

Ibis, ibis, goose.

There are some feral populations of Egyptian geese in the area. They are probably more closely related to shelducks than geese. They were sacred to the ancient Egyptians.

Facsimile Painting of Geese, Tomb of Nefermaat and Itat, ca. 2575-2551 from The Met.