Coots and Grebes of Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge

The Coots and Grebes page houses images of adult and juvenile Coots from Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge
along with several selected images of baby Coots which were taken at Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles.
These are followed by a number of images of breeding and non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebes taken at
Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge and images of breeding Pied-Billed Grebes under the Lotus at Echo Park.

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Coots
Grackles and Grebes

Coot 6797

One of a series of 500mm telephoto close portraits of American Coots at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge.

It is extremely difficult to get a perfectly exposed image of a Coot in sunlight.
The combination of a dark body and an ivory white beak on a dark-to-midtone
background causes you to dance a fine line between underexposing the body
and losing feather and eye detail or overexposing the Coot’s beak to white.
Most images of Coots taken in full sunlight show an overexposed beak.

Coot 6803 16x9

An adult American Coot patrols the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in the early evening in July.

Adult Coots have a sooty black to plumbeous (leaden) gray body, red eyes, and an ivory white beak.
At the end of the beak, a charcoal gray to dusky-red ring encircles the area 1/5 of the way from the tip.
Many adult Coots have a reddish-brown area at the top of the bill, on the frontal shield between the eyes.
Male and female adult Coots are very similar in appearance (females are about 25% smaller than males).

Coot Babies X1579c

Coots have very large feet with scaled, lobed toes. Their legs are placed far back on the body,
very near the rump, making them awkward on land. You can see how long their feet are relative
to their body length in this cropped image of two Coot babies. Baby Coots look a bit like bald
old men, with sparse feathers and down all over except on the top of the head. Cute and ugly
at the same time. More images of baby Coots exploring themselves and feeding are below.

The bright plume feathers, known as chick ornaments, are a survival adaptation. Studies
have shown that mothers preferentially feed chicks with the brightest and most prominent
plume feathers, thus the chick shown on the right is probably going to be fed more often.
The bright plumes are bleached out after about a week, so these are very new babies.

Coot 6820c

Coot 6805

Coot bookends, taken at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge just after 6 PM in early July.

Coots are the most aquatic of the birds in their family. They move like ducks, and are often
seen with ducks and feed with them. Coots dive for food, forage and scavenge on land, and
are kleptoparasitic... if they don’t feel like hunting they will steal food from birds around them.

Coot 6815c

Coots prefer freshwater lakes and ponds, open marshes and slow rivers, but they sometimes will
winter in saltwater environments for short periods. Coots are migratory birds, but they sometimes
stay year-round in areas where the water does not freeze in winter. Coots often mix with ducks,
and they are sometimes mistaken for ducks, but they are closer relatives of Sandhill Cranes.

Coot 6823

Coots are also known as mud hens, and are the mascot of the Toledo Mud Hens, a well-known minor
league baseball team associated with the Detroit Tigers (made famous by references in M*A*S*H).
Coots on land bob their head and walk like a chicken, which is the source of the name “mud hen”.

Coots propel themselves through the water by pumping their heads back and forth and by paddling
with their relatively large, non-webbed feet... their lobed toes make Coots fairly efficient swimmers.

Coot 7480c

Note the reddish-brown swelling on the forehead (frontal shield) in this image that was nearly overexposed.
Maintaining proper exposure of the bill in images of adult Coots can be quite challenging. This one was close.

Coot Dispute X0526 16x9

Coots are often aggressive towards birds who wander into their territory, and often chase them away,
running on the surface of the water while madly flapping their short, rounded wings. These wings do not
provide much lift, so Coots use a similar technique when taking off, running on the water to gain speed.

Coots are in the same family as Rails, Moorhens, Swamphens and Gallinules, and like most rails the Coot has
short, rounded wings that are inefficient in flight. Some species of rail are flightless. Coots can fly... just not well.

Coot Dispute X0527 16x9

When the Coot goes into “patrolling” position, with its head lowered and its tail down, you know it is
about to become aggressive towards another coot or a duck which it perceives as a territorial threat.
It stretches its neck out horizontally and begins to charge at the interloper, running across the water.

Male Coots also chase females across the water as part of the display during the pair-bonding ritual.

Coots chasing each other on a pond can offer moments of hilarity, and are often one of the most talked about
events for many people who visit a wetlands refuge for the first time. They can also be some of the most difficult
scenes to capture well, as coots move very rapidly and often at distances which makes it challenging to acquire
and track focus. I would often use running coots as a training subject when teaching how to shoot birds in flight.

Coot Dispute X1095 pano LG

American Coots running across the surface of the pond in the late afternoon, at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in mid-April.

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Coots
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Coot Juvenile 6654

Juvenile Coots have a grayish-brown body, lighter gray cheeks, throat and neck, and a darker gray crown.
Their bill is a pinkish-tan, that in the right light can be a pearlescent bronze as is seen in the image above.
Juveniles have a smaller and less protruding frontal shield with a smaller reddish-brown area, and molt to
their adult plumage at about 4 months of age. Juvenile legs and feet are greenish (adults are yellowish).

Coot Juvenile 6656

A juvenile American Coot wanders into a beautiful green area of the pnd at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge
in this 700mm telephoto close portrait taken in the late afternoon in early July, when the level of algae on
the pond is high. The dark green waters of the algae-strewn pond make achieving an accurate exposure
on the light feathers of the neck difficult. The tendency is to overexpose the neck and bill, reducing detail.

Coot Juvenile 6718

Coot Juvenile 6725

500mm telephoto close portraits of a juvenile American Coot, taken in the early evening in July.

Coot Juvenile 6739c

A juvenile squawks as it passes the photographer in a close portrait taken in exquisite blue-green water.

A major source of food for Coots is aquatic plants, especially algae. The breast feathers and bill of this
juvenile are covered in the green algae it has been swimming through, and on which it has been feeding.

Coot Juvenile 6740

A juvenile American Coot squawks as it swims through green algae-strewn water in the early evening in July.

Coot Juvenile 6741 M

A 500mm telephoto close portrait of a juvenile American Coot swimming through the
algae-strewn waters of the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in the early evening in July.

All of the landscape (horizontal) large version images linked from the thumbnails are 1500 pixels wide.
Portrait (vertical) images are 1200 pixels tall (1290 pixels with title bar). Images designated with an “M”
in the shot number are 5:4 aspect ratio, 1500 x 1290 with a title bar, or 1500 x 1200 without a title bar.
Some of the portrait images are also designated as “M”, and are 1500 pixels tall (plus the title bar).

Coot Juvenile 6743

Coot Juvenile 6747

The juvenile Coot moves into a clear section of the pond, still squawking and chirping.
The still pond waters yield a beautiful reflection of the head and neck of the young coot.

Coot Juvenile 6751

Besides algae, Coots dive for vegetation, small fish, crustaceans, snails, worms and aquatic insects.
The design of the beak allows the Coot to filter out the water and mud it takes in. This image was taken
as the juvenile was emitting a sound that can best be described as “WHAAAAT?”... probably curious as
to what the long black thing making the clicking sound was (maybe this was its first camera experience).

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Coot Juvenile 6780

A juvenile American Coot displays his pearlescent bronze bill and his algae-coated breast
as he patrols the blue-green waters of the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in early July.

Even though Coots act like and live around waterfowl, they are more closely related to cranes
than ducks. Most of their close relatives in the Rail family live in the marshes, but over time, coots
have left the marshes and have adapted and evolved to live more like a duck. Coots still have the
chicken-like bill common to the rails, so while they filter-feed, they do not have the lamellae on
the ducks bill that allows the duck to easily filter water out of the bill. Coots just open the bill
slightly and dip their head a bit to drain the water out before they swallow their food.

Coot Juvenile 6829

A juvenile American Coot plies the algae-strewn waters of the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge
and screams at the photographer in the early evening in July. Note the coating of algae on its breast.

Coot X0492

An adult American Coot in the mid-afternoon in late March. This image is right on the edge
of proper exposure... the beak is just beginning to lose detail. Accurately exposing an image
of a Coot, with its dark body and ivory-white bill on dark water can be quite challenging. Often,
the bill is overexposed. This challenge offered good training when I was teaching technique.

Coot X0501 M

A 420 mm telephoto close portrait of an adult American Coot, showing the red eye, the
charcoal to dusky-red ring at the tip of the bill, and the reddish-brown frontal shield at the
top of the bill (above the eyes). The bill is very nearly overexposed in this difficult shot,
exposed to balance bill detail and maintenance of detail in the dusky black feathers.

Coot X0507 M

This close portrait of an American Coot on shore shows an absolutely perfect exposure of the bill.

Maintaining an exposure like this at distance is nearly impossible. Generally, if the bill is properly
exposed, the dark feathers are underexposed and yield little or no detail. Below this series of close
portraits is the exception... a perfectly lit and perfectly exposed scene of an adult American Coot.

Coot X0510 M

A perfectly exposed telephoto close portrait of an adult American Coot,
taken at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in the late afternoon at the end of March.
Note the reddish-brown frontal shield on the forehead at the top of the bill, and
the gradient from dark gray through charcoal to dusky red in the ring at the tip.

Coot X0512 M

I suppose you can imagine that I was rather proud of myself for perfectly exposing these images,
taking advantage of a rare opportunity at a posed ‘studio portrait’ of a Coot. I have to tell you that
getting a chance to take a portrait like this does not happen very often in the wild. Most wildlife
do not allow a close approach, and even with long telephoto lenses they are rarely this close.

Coot X5138

An absolutely perfect exposure of an adult American Coot on beautifully figured water, taken in
the late afternoon in mid-September. This is my favorite telephoto portrait of an American Coot.

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Coot Babies 4381

Coot Babies 4390

Newly-hatched baby American Coots under close watch by Mama on Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles.

Coot Babies 4414

Baby Coots are covered with down except on their bald crowns, and have bright orange plume feathers
called “chick ornaments”, which are a survival adaptation contributing to parental selection of the chicks
with the brightest, most dense ornamentation, who are preferentially fed and thus more likely to survive.

Coot Babies 4416

A baby Coot literally looks sideways at the photographer while its mates are preening
in this 300mm close portrait taken in the mid-afternoon on Echo Park Lake in late June.

Coot Babies 4418 16x9

The first evidence of parental selection of ornamental traits in their offspring was found in American Coots.
These ornaments are lost by the end of the period of parental dependence, usually after one or two weeks.
Chicks with more brightly colored bills and the densest, most colorful ornamental plumes are preferentially
fed by their parents, which led to an evolutionary selection for this trait, especially in larger clutch sizes.

Coot Babies 4430

Coot Babies 4450

Baby Coots socializing and watching for their mother in their first week on Echo Park Lake.

Coot Babies 4443

One baby Coot examines its enormous lobed feet while a sibling keeps a lookout underwater
and its other clutch-mates discuss weighty thoughts while waiting for Mama to bring them food.

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Coot Babies Feeding 4394

Coot Babies Feeding 4398

Baby Coots compete to get a morsel of food in the process known as scramble competition.
Chick ornaments are often a factor, as the chick closest to the parent is not always the one fed.
Mama feeds chicks almost exclusively with animal matter, although they occasionally get veggies.

Coot Babies Feeding 4420

One baby Coot performs a cute display, trying to edge out its sibling for a tasty morsel of food,
while its clutch-mates watch to see how well this new technique works. The ornamentation and the
color of bare skin patches varies over time, possibly acting as a signal of hunger to the parents.

Coot Babies Feeding 4421

As we can see, the mother selected the chick who performed the cute display. Cute does count...

Coot Babies Feeding 4434

Coot Babies Feeding 4439

The babies also scramble to get closer to Mom, as those closest have a better chance of being fed.

Coot Babies Feeding 4452

Mom doesn’t always feed the closest chick, or the one who displays first, although this obviously
well-fed chick tries its best to get another morsel, displaying for Mama in tried and tested manner.

Coot Babies Feeding 4455

In this case, she passes up the first chick to feed the smallest baby, proving once again that Mama Knows.

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Coot Babies Juvenile Curiosity 4407

A baby American Coot checks itself out while standing on a palm frond on Echo Park Lake.

Coot Baby 4271

Coot Baby 4274

Baby Coots swimming under the Lotus at the edge of Echo Park Lake in late June.

Coot Baby 4273

A baby Coot checks out the long beak of the photographer’s camera while swimming under the Lotus.

Coot Baby 4286

A telephoto close portrait of a baby American Coot, showing its brightly colored bill
and chick ornaments as it swims under the Lotus at the edge of Echo Park Lake in LA.

Coot Baby 4288 16x9

A baby Coot munches a tasty bit of algae while swimming under the Lotus at Echo Park Lake.

Coot Baby 4289

A week-old baby Coot shows its brightly colored bill and chick ornamentation
as it approaches a Lotus stalk near the edge of Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles.

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Pied-Billed Grebe under Lotus 4332

Also under the Lotus at Echo Park Lake is a Pied-Billed Grebe in breeding plumage.

Pied-Billed Grebes are primarily found in freshwater wetlands under similar conditions to those
where you find American Coots. Like coots, the Pied-Billed Grebe has its legs far back near the
rump (thus the grebe family name podicipedidae, or rump-foot), with long lobed toes rather than
webbed feet, and a short, chicken-like bill (which is light and striped in the breeding season).

Pied-Billed Grebe under Lotus 4344

Pied-Billed Grebe under Lotus 4348

A Pied-Billed Grebe in breeding plumage, under the Lotus at Echo Park Lake in late June.

Pied-Billed Grebe HS3064

A breeding Pied-Billed Grebe on the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in the late morning in February,
with the surface of the pond turned a reddish gold from the eukaryotic red algae present in the water. The
Pied-Billed Grebe is a rather small bird that is rarely seen in flight, but it is an expert diver, submarining
underwater in search of crustaceans and fish, amphibians and invertebrates as well as aquatic plants.

Pied-Billed Grebe 0195

Pied-Billed Grebe HS3096

A non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe on the golden waters at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in December,
and a breeding Pied-Billed Grebe on the same pond in February. Note the difference in the appearance
of the bill (non-breeding: golden-brown, breeding: silver with a black stripe) and the color of the plumage.

Pied-Billed Grebe HS3076

A Pied-Billed Grebe in breeding plumage eyes the photographer from the colorful waters of
the red algae-strewn pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in the late morning in early February.

Pied-Billed Grebe 7516

A breeding Pied-Billed Grebe on the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge at late morning in mid-January.

In breeding plumage, the normally tawny-to-medium brown of the non-breeding plumage darkens and the
bill turns from a yellow-brown to a silver-gray with a wide black band (thus the common name). The crown
of the head, the back, and the nape of the neck are dark brown with black and the throat becomes black.
The adult males and females look very much alike, although I assume that grebes can tell the difference.

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Pied-Billed Grebe 0968

A 700mm portrait of a non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe on the smooth waters of the pond
at the Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge, in the late afternoon on winter solstice day in December.
Compare with the molting Pied-Billed Grebes shown in the two images shown just below.

Pied-Billed Grebe 0314

Pied-Billed Grebe 9417

Above left, a non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe is molting into breeding plumage. The plumage itself still
resembles the non-breeding look, but the bill is beginning to change color and the dark band is appearing.
Above right, a juvenile Pied-Billed Grebe is beginning to lose its stripes and molt into non-breeding plumage.

Pied-Billed Grebe 1462

A 700mm portrait of a non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe on the placid waters of
the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge, in the late afternoon at the end of November.

Pied-Billed Grebes are mostly solitary birds. They do not generally flock together, and
they tend to dive at the first sign of trouble. They can trap water in their feathers to adjust
their buoyancy, raising and lowering their body in the water. Sometimes they float along
with just the head out of the water. This technique also reduces drag when it is diving.

Pied-Billed Grebe X5147

Pied-Billed Grebe X0168

Non-breeding (left) and breeding Pied-Billed Grebes at late afternoon in September and April, respectively.
Pied-Billed Grebes generally make slow dives (or simply sink gradually into the water), but they are capable
of an emergency crash dive, throwing itself backward with the wings outstretched, submerging the head and
tail last, while kicking water several feet into the air. This technique has given them the nickname “hell-diver”.

Pied-Billed Grebe Squawk X1083

Pied-Billed Grebe X1084

Pied-Billed Grebes have a number of vocalizations, including cheeps, squawks, chattering grunts and clucks.
Above, a breeding Pied-Billed Grebe squawks while swimming at Sepulveda in the late afternoon in mid-April.

Pied-Billed Grebe X1117

A 700mm telephoto portrait of a Pied-Billed Grebe in breeding plumage in the late afternoon in mid-April.

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Pied-Billed Grebe X5035

A 500mm telephoto portrait of a non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe on the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge
in the late afternoon in mid-September. Note the yellow-brown bill and the primarily brown plumage with the
darker brown crown feathers and the grayish-brown back. The throat is white in the non-breeding plumage.

Pied-Billed Grebe X5142

Pied-Billed Grebe X5148

Pied-Billed Grebe Display X5359

Like the American Coot, the Pied-Billed Grebe runs across the water as part of its courtship display.
Here, a non-breeding grebe practices its display, flapping its wings and running with head outstretched.

Pied-Billed Grebe Display X5360

A non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe practices its courtship display in the late afternoon in mid-September.
Note the long lobed toes of the Pied-Billed Grebe’s non-webbed foot, which is much like that of the Coot.

Pied-Billed Grebe Display X5368

A non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe slides over the surface of the water at the end of a practice
courtship display on the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge in the late afternoon in mid-September.

Pied-Billed Grebe Display XXL

A 1600 x 1038 version of the XXL Composite (6005 x 3688) showing a non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe
running across the surface of the pond at Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge while practicing its courtship display.

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Coots
Grackles and Grebes