NPS/Intern Tristan Thomas American Coot (Fulica americana)• Although they look similar and swim like a duck, American Coots are not related to ducks and do not have webbed feet like a duck.• American Coots love to eat aquatic plants like algae, duckweed, eelgrass, wild rice, sedges, hydrilla, wild celery, waterlilies, cattails, water milfoil and more. Sometimes when on land they will eat terrestrial plants. • Coots are very clumsy in flight and to get in the air they have to beat their wings while running across the water for many yards. • They almost always build their nests over water on floating platforms and usually are near living or dead vegetation like reeds, cattails, sedges, or grasses. Identification Information• Size: Between a Robin and a Crow (Medium)• Color: Coots are dark gray/black birds. They have a bright white beak and forehead. Their white beaks sometimes have a black ring around it. They have yellow/green legs. They have red eyes and at close range you can sometimes see a small patch of red on their forehead.
All of the above information is an abbreviated version of information gathered from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Please visit their website for more in-depth bird information.
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Last updated: August 27, 2019