The start of February. Gone is the oppressive slate coloured sky of January ready to cover us in blanket of snow, and in its place a vast blue mass that seems to have lifted itself and our spirits. Calm, gentle, but shattered by the croaking, honking and hooting of the coot. We often think of these as kind, family birds, slightly comical with their oversized feet, but how we’ve misread them.
The winter pond has been the home of the mallards, almost twice the size and weight of the coot, but come spring, David seems to scare Goliath into submission. When a coot wants the pond, it gets the pond: even if the ducks are forced onto the grass, over the hedge or down the road, they’ll be kicked off sooner or later. And my, can coots kick! Their gargantuan feet allow them to power through the water, getting nest material or food for hungry chicks. And those feet are weapons as well: they keep most rivals at bay and I’ve even watched them drown mallard chicks by forcing them underwater.
From February, when they arrive, to October, when they leave, the coots rule to roost. Nature is all about interactions between organisms- a specie, a pair, a family, an ecosystem, a biome. These interactions can be productive or destructive, as in the case of the coot and mallard, but both types are interesting and worth a look at.
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