Many lakes in and around the Twin Cities presently are hosting large flocks of American Coots. Coots are smallish dark waterfowl that congregate in significant numbers as they prepare for fall migration. Lake Minnetonka has thousands of coots. On my side of town, both Medicine and Parker lakes have large black patches of coots. They are not hard to find. But in all my years of watching birds I never have seen one of these flocks in the air. It’s difficult to get any coot to actually fly. They prefer to dive at sign of danger, or skitter along the surface of the water to distance themselves. But these migrating flocks fly in, and they fly out. I have to believe that these birds both arrive and depart in darkness. There are life birds and there are life birding events. I’m waiting to put flying flocks of coots on my list.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 11:59 am and is filed under Bird migration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.