![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2699-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2699-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nTypically they lay on their backs in the water and strike out with them. Here Muhammad is about to throw a…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/coot-fight-2700-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coot-fight-2700-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
sweeping right hook to Joe’s head. In the poor light I didn’t have enough shutter speed to get that foot sharp but with the water trail it’s leaving behind you get the idea.<\/p>\n
For this series I was using my backup camera with my ‘baby lens’ attached because I was so close to the birds. Unbeknownst to me I had a very slow memory card in that camera so I missed the results of this foot blow when my buffer filled up.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2702-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2702-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But a split second later Muhammad threw another roundhouse with his other foot and that blow had disastrous results for Joe.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2703-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2703-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\n
It knocked him flat down onto the water.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2704-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2704-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\n
Muhammad quickly moved in to finish the job, forcing Joe…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2705-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2705-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
almost completely underwater.<\/p>\n
For the rest of these photos DJ is out of frame to the left but he’s still very close and fascinated by all the excitement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2708-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2708-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\n
Muhammad appears to be asking Joe if he’s ready to give up.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2713-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2713-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But Joe recovered and the fight continued, for a very long time. I took way too many photos of the brawl to include any more of them today but I’ll likely post more of them sometime in the future.<\/p>\n
Beginning this time of year the pugilistic tendencies of coots make them a favorite photo subject of mine. These photos show why.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Note to photographers: Most of these photos were taken at or near 1\/1600 – 1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon 100-400 lens<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of these combatants could give any human prize fighter a lesson on how to land back-to-back haymakers.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93742,"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":[1051,334,394],"tags":[1052,5575,140,5573,1054,5574,880,311],"class_list":["post-93758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-coots","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-american-coot","tag-buffer-filling-up","tag-fighting","tag-fighting-technique","tag-fulica-americana","tag-haymaker","tag-lobed-feet","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/coot-fight-2700-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ooe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93758","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=93758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2662-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2662-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2695-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2695-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/american-coot-2697-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-2697-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n