two coot stories
May. 16th, 2007 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyThis morning on our way to the office we saw a coot with her cootlings on a little patch of green between the sidewalk and the canal that the office is on. I had a heel of bread in my bag, and I took it out thinking to give it to them. I wasn't sure at first whether to walk forward a bit or to try to toss it to them, because I wasn't sure which would disturb/scare them less, and while I was decided the coot decided for me -- she saw me standing there with a piece of bread in my hand and made a bee-line for me! She probably would've taken it straight from my hand if I'd tried -- but I just tossed it on the ground in front of me instead.
Then, as we were taking our cool down walk after running this evening, we walked along the edge of the canal outside our place. A lot of boats tie up there, and a lot of people bumper their boats against their docks with tires. Tires are favorite places for coot nests. In one, there was a coot standing on the tire looking very intently inside of it and making the strangest clucking sounds. Suddenly, a moment later, a cootling about the size of a clementine popped into the water! That is by far the smallest cootling I've ever seen, and I have to wonder if the reason the mother was clucking so strangely was because her eggs were hatching.
It's weird how drawn out the nesting season is here. There's a family of mallards in the canal by the office that have their real feathers in already and are about three-quarters grown. And then there's still a few nests out front of our place that don't even appear to have eggs yet. I suppose because it's not cold enough here to require migration there isn't such a hurry to get the nice in right away.
Then, as we were taking our cool down walk after running this evening, we walked along the edge of the canal outside our place. A lot of boats tie up there, and a lot of people bumper their boats against their docks with tires. Tires are favorite places for coot nests. In one, there was a coot standing on the tire looking very intently inside of it and making the strangest clucking sounds. Suddenly, a moment later, a cootling about the size of a clementine popped into the water! That is by far the smallest cootling I've ever seen, and I have to wonder if the reason the mother was clucking so strangely was because her eggs were hatching.
It's weird how drawn out the nesting season is here. There's a family of mallards in the canal by the office that have their real feathers in already and are about three-quarters grown. And then there's still a few nests out front of our place that don't even appear to have eggs yet. I suppose because it's not cold enough here to require migration there isn't such a hurry to get the nice in right away.
