Coot children look like something invented by Hieronymus Bosch. This is an advanced little coot, who can slurp up slime all by itself.
And this little coot still has his slime fed to him by his parents. He waits eagerly, a fuzzball of color in the dreary pond.
These coots are all residents of the Wandsworth Common.
Moorhen children look like balding aliens! But cute balding aliens. Their parents take turns bringing them slime carefully collected from the bottom of the pond, and they enjoy their slime very much.
Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a very nice, if very wet, trip to London. Because of the terrible weather I wasn’t able to do too much birding, but I did manage to spend a morning watching parenting of all kinds in the Wandsworth Common. I only photographed the avian parents, but all the while a number of humans were engaged in pretty similar activities behind me.
This mallard mother was mad at the coot for getting too close to her ducklings. The coot was trying to get the best pond slime for its own children, and wasn’t too happy to be pushed around by the mallard. They made a big fuss about the whole thing.
This is what an angry coot looks like. I don’t think the mallard was too impressed.
The back of a juvenile mallard in Wandsworth Common.