Marvin began attacking Beaky on December 2. The sequence of pictures at the right shows one of these incidents. Coots are territorial, but rarely fight to the death unless the loser is extremely determined and will not give up or run away. The losing coot may be drowned by holding him under the water. After a few days of this, it was clear that Marvin was going for the kill, even when Beaky tried to escape.

The elderly, crippled coot was not nearly as big or strong as Marvin had become in the past year.

Feeding the birds had not been a serious problem until the middle of last winter. The migrant coots had been fed along the sidewalk, separately from the resident coots. However since the ice plant had been removed and the soil repeatedly treated with weed killer, feeding in that area seemed inadvisable. The wild coots were subsequently fed at the far end of the dock. This brought them back inside the yacht basin. The wild coots would respect Beaky's territory and go around the other side or end of the dock to be fed.

Except Marvin.

One time when Marvin was charging at Beaky, I just couldn't stand to see Beaky killed this way, because I had failed to keep the birds separated. Since I couldn't catch Marvin, I grabbed Beaky. This prevented a fight, but only resulted in Beaky being terrified of me. The next time Marvin approached I used the water hose from the dock to spray him with water. Marvin was undaunted by this, but Beaky is terrified of the hose, and after this has been afraid of Marvin.

By December 17, Beaky takes food from my hand again, but remains suspicious. He will probably never trust me again, for fear of being grabbed.

Beaky is also very nervous approaching the boat for fear of attack by Marvin and the hose.

Marvin victorious, is shown at the right. This fight was ended by a gull. The gull dove on the coots, probably hoping to make a meal of the loser.

The picture at right shows Beaky badly beaten escaping after swimming under water. Coots may swim 25 yards or more and simply seem to disappear under the water.

By the end of the month, a routine is established. Beaky and Monday are fed at the boat before sunrise while Marvin and the other wild coots are fed at the end of the dock. Later, Marvin and the other coots come to the boat and Beaky hides in one of several vacant boat slips about 25 yards away.

One of the palm trees appears to be dead where the ice plant was killed with herbicide. The remarkable fact is that the ice plant has been removed and sprayed with herbicide, but still gets regular watering.

When any plants happen to come up, they are once again killed with herbicide, but still watered on a routine basis. This tree is dead after the first rain storms of the season.

Perhaps weed killer should not be applied with heavy irrigation.

Coots never fly around the marina after they have arrived from migration. However, this winter more of the migrant coots are seen flying to get around as well as hopping up onto the docks and boats.

By the end of December a one day count of migrant coots in the three parks shows thirty coots at Marina View Park, no coots at Chula Vista Bayfront Park, and this small flock of twenty coots at Bayside Park. This is fewer than the 150 coots counted in 2005, but may be a turning point from the twenty or thirty percent decrease each of the past years.

There are 15 coots that stay inside the yacht basin.

Surf Scoters, Melanitta perspicillata, populate the water in the marina yacht basin in December. They dredge up vegetation from the bottom of the bay, and make a whistling noise when they fly. They drag their tails in the water as they paddle around.

On December 25, Beaky is unable to stand on his right leg and has some difficulty paddling through the water. It's impossible to know the cause of this, and no indication of this injury is visible, but he continues to aggressively fight for his territory whenever other coots come near.

Some of the wild coots also hop to be fed while on the docks. Click on this link to see hop.wmv, and how the hoppers get a bite to eat.

Big Picture:

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The terrible juvenile seagull always wants to get into everything.

Index:

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Background

Coot Food

Recipe for Coot Pudding

Coot Misinformation

Bibliography of Research

Coot Calls and Movies

Historical Summary

Links to Important Sites

Opinion