Down in Louisiana, coot are known as pouldeau -- a French Creole term for "water hen." Coots are mid-sized waders in the genus Fulica.
Though able to fly, the coot has short rounded wings which make it difficult to take off.
Sometimes seen offshore, especially in winter if freshwater areas are frozen.
assateague Emu hunter extraordinaire Posts: 21278 Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2009 12:25 pm Location: Eastern Shore, … * This map is intended as a guide. Once in the air, the coot can fly as well as any other bird. The coot gizard is good too and they are huge ... Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Let a man vote to give himself a fish and he eats until society collapses.
The males and females look alike. Nature lovers, on the other hand, are privy to an entirely new complement of coots, a collection of charming charcoal wading birds found throughout most of the world. The waterborne American Coot is one good reminder that not everything that floats is a duck. A close look at a coot—that small head, those scrawny legs—reveals a different kind of bird entirely. The coot is a small swamp bird that is actually more closely related to sand hill cranes than it is to ducks.
... What eats them and how do they avoid being eaten?
Coot can be seen mainly on freshwater lakes, gravel pits, reservoirs, rivers and town park lakes when deep enough.
Coot There are also many ducks that people say are inedible, like the spoon bill and the merganser, mostly because of they are fish eating ducks but even those are more revered than the lowly coot. The lobed toes make the coot a powerful swimmer, especially in open water. Their dark bodies and white faces are common sights in nearly any open water across the continent, and they often mix with ducks. For the uninitiated, the word “coot” calls to mind nothing more than doddering old codgers and curmudgeons.
It shows general distribution rather than detailed, localised populations.