Montana Field Guide

A dark henlike bird with a blackish head and neck, slate body (paler in juveniles), and a frontal shield that usually is small and maroon or dark brown (may become bulbous at peak of breeding season; a few have a white frontal shield); undertail coverts white on the sides, black in the middle; white trailing edge on wings; whitish bill; large feet with lobed toes (NGS 1983). An awkward and often clumsy flier, the coot requires long running takeoffs across the water's surface to become airborne (Brisbin and Mowbray. The Birds of North America, No. 697, 2002).

Differs from gallinules in having lobed toes and lacking red on the bill; lacks the white line on the sides of the common moorhen. differs from caribbean coot in having a smaller forehead shield that is reddish-brown instead of white or white tinged with yellow (some american coots have an extensively white forehead shield). differs from eurasian coot in being slightly smaller and paler and having the undertail coverts black and white rather than all black; also the forehead shield is reddish-brown forehead shield instead of all white.

Bozeman migr: 3/28-6/1 & 9/5-11/25; peak on 4/25 & 10/1 (Skaar 1969). State peaks 3rd wk April & 3rd wk September (Davis 1961).

Summer birds prefer marshy borders of ponds (Skaar 1969). This coot may be found in almost any of a broad variety of wetlands, including freshwater lakes, ponds, marshes, roadside ditches, and industrial-waste impoundments, as well as in coastal marine habitats. Two features generally characterize all bodies of water where coots breed: (1) heavy stands of emergent aquatic vegetation along at least some portion of the shoreline and (2) as least some depth of standing water within those stands of vegetation (Brisbin and Mowbray 2002).

The coot will consume grains, grasses, and agricultural crops on land; however, it generally forages in or under water, where it is almost exclusively and herbivore (Brisbin and Mowbray 2002).

40,000 seen at Bowdoin in fall, 1956 (Davis 1961). Not seen in Bozeman area in 1888-1890. Its increase in numbers may be due to construction of reservoirs (Skaar 1969).

Nests are built over water on floating platforms and almost always associated with dense stands of living or dead emergent vegetation. Subelliptical eggs in various shades of ground color. Clutch size ranges 8 - 12 eggs (Brisbin and Mowbray 2002). Near Fortine, egg dates range from 5/17-7/1. Earliest brood observed was 5/17.