{"id":13954,"date":"2013-04-02T06:16:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T12:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=13954"},"modified":"2013-04-02T06:50:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T12:50:56","slug":"coot-running-through-walls-of-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/02\/coot-running-through-walls-of-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Coot Running Through Walls Of Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coots are quarrelsome, belligerent and\u00a0cantankerous, especially\u00a0the males in\u00a0springtime before the females lay their eggs.\u00a0 Sometimes weaker combatants are killed.\u00a0 So when a\u00a0more dominant (stronger) male signals aggression toward another male, the weaker bird often makes every effort to escape conflict.\u00a0 That’s what happened here.\u00a0 I thought the situation made for some interesting and unique action photos though they’re not great images.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When they’re in a hurry, these birds literally run across the water with the aid of their lobed (not webbed)\u00a0feet and those feet make quite the splash.\u00a0 This is the\u00a0dominant bird, chasing another coot who is just out of frame to the\u00a0left and has made\u00a0the splashes that this coot is running through.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This action was very fast which produced a trail of splashes that was much wider than I could get in the frame and a less-than-sharp bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0It would have been fun if one of the images had the head and neck poking through one of the\u00a0water splashes but it didn’t happen.\u00a0 Maybe next time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here the dominant coot is giving up the chase and beginning to settle back down into the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/8, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But this shot (different birds, taken on another day) shows why the weaker bird was so anxious to avoid physical conflict.\u00a0 The fights can be vicious and\u00a0this one\u00a0lasted a long time and was very one-sided.\u00a0 I thought the\u00a0coot on the right was going to kill the other bird as it held its head under water for quite a while but eventually the weaker coot escaped.<\/p>\n

I’m always interested in bird behaviors and American Coots have some complex and intriguing ones.\u00a0 I ignore them all too often.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coots are quarrelsome, belligerent and cantankerous, especially the males in springtime before the females lay their eggs. Sometimes weaker combatants are killed. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1051,4,334,394],"tags":[415,1052,1053,139,1054,880,211,1360],"class_list":["post-13954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-coots","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-agonistic-behavior","tag-american-coot","tag-coot","tag-fight","tag-fulica-americana","tag-lobed-feet","tag-male","tag-run-on-water"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3D4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}