{"id":20616,"date":"2013-12-12T06:04:34","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T13:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20616"},"modified":"2013-12-12T06:22:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T13:22:06","slug":"a-coot-in-pursuit-of-a-grebes-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/12\/a-coot-in-pursuit-of-a-grebes-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"A Coot In Pursuit Of A Grebe’s Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although the American Coot is almost exclusively an herbivore it will occasionally make an exception and eat animal matter.\u00a0 They’re also well-known for food\u00a0thievery (kleptoparasitism)\u00a0and two days ago\u00a0this Pied-billed Grebe nearly became one of its victims.<\/p>\n

These images are of documentary quality only.<\/p>\n

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\"pied-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

The grebe had captured a fish (yes, another weather loach – more\u00a0about that later) and\u00a0at first it was able to concentrate on its preparations for\u00a0swallowing the fish.<\/p>\n

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\"pied-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

But almost immediately this coot moved in aggressively.\u00a0 And as fast as it could swim.\u00a0 The grebe is already aware that there may be a developing problem.<\/p>\n

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\"pied-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

For this little grebe to swim at this angle its feet (which are attached very far back on the body)\u00a0have to really be churning.\u00a0 The coot was a faster swimmer than the grebe (especially with the added load of the fish) and closed the distance between them\u00a0quickly.\u00a0 First the grebe\u00a0zigged to my right…<\/p>\n

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\"pied-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

and then abruptly changed direction and came right at me.\u00a0 The coot is still closing in.<\/p>\n

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\"pied-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

When this little drama began I didn’t know if the coot was simply acting aggressively toward the grebe or if it was actually after the fish (all this happened very fast) but when I reviewed my images it seemed obvious that the fish was its goal.\u00a0 In this shot, for example, the eye of the coot seems to be directly on the fish.\u00a0 And this behavior began immediately after the grebe surfaced with the loach.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"pied-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

To be perfectly honest, in all the excitement I can’t remember how the grebe escaped with the fish, but it did.\u00a0 It may have dived with it or the coot may have simply given up and in reviewing my images I can’t be sure what happened.\u00a0 When I’m looking through my lens my “peripheral vision” is virtually nonexistent.<\/p>\n

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\"pied-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

But I can<\/em> tell you that the grebe was in an incredible hurry to swallow the fish before it was challenged again.\u00a0\u00a0 All the frantic\u00a0neck-pumping and other efforts required to get the fish down quickly\u00a0created quite the commotion in and above\u00a0the water.<\/p>\n

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

Ok, back to the occasional carnivorous habits of coots.\u00a0 As I said earlier, coots are almost exclusively herbivores but they’ll occasionally eat invertebrates and smaller vertebrates – especially during the breeding season.\u00a0\u00a0 They’ve also been documented to consume carrion.\u00a0 This image was taken last winter when a few “nature” photographers were baiting eagles in close for better images.\u00a0 From my position I could see this hunk of “meat” buried in the phragmites but couldn’t positively identify it, though others reported later that it was a chicken carcass (I avoided the area after learning that piece of disturbing news).\u00a0 Here you can see the center coot with a hunk of meat in its beak.<\/p>\n

One more interesting observation.\u00a0 I’ve been photographing at this pond for seven years and prior to this year none of the fish I’ve seen consumed by birds has been a weather\u00a0loach (though I have seen loaches eaten in other nearby areas).\u00a0 So far this winter I’ve seen\u00a0roughly a dozen fish eaten here by grebes and\u00a0I’m quite sure that all\u00a0but one of them was a loach.\u00a0 That tells me that this pond is infested with this invasive species.\u00a0 Last week I reported some of these observations to both state and federal fisheries specialists but I’ve yet to hear back from either one of them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Although the American Coot is almost exclusively a herbivore it will occasionally make an exception and eat animal matter. They’re also well-known for food thievery (kleptoparasitism) and two days ago this Pied-billed Grebe nearly became one of its victims.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20625,"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":[1051,334,8,392,394,359],"tags":[1052,42,913,1054,185,1430,251,993,320],"class_list":["post-20616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-coots","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-american-coot","tag-baiting","tag-carrion","tag-fulica-americana","tag-invasive-species","tag-kleptoparasitism","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/pied-billed-grebe-7360-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5mw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20616","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=20616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}