American bison
The American bison or bison commonly known as the American buffalo or buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed North America in vast herds. Their historical range, by 9000 BCE, is described as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland that ran from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, east to the Atlantic Seaboard as far north as New York and south to Georgia and per some sources down to Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750, they became nearly extinct by a combination of commercial hunting and slaughter in the 19th century and introduction of bovine diseases from domestic cattle. With a population in excess of 60 million in the late 18th century, the species was down to 541 animals by 1889. Recovery efforts expanded in the mid-20th century, with a resurgence to 31,000 animals today restricted to a few national parks and reserves. Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described: the plains bison, smaller in size and with a more rounded hump, the wood bison —the larger of the two and having a taller, square hump.
Furthermore, the plains bison has been suggested to consist of a northern plains and a southern plains subspecies, bringing the total to three. However, this is not supported; the wood bison is one of the largest wild species of bovid in the world, surpassed by only the Asian gaur and wild water buffalo. It is the heaviest, second tallest extant land animal after moose in the Americas; the American bison is the national mammal of the United States. The term buffalo is sometimes considered to be a misnomer for this animal, could be confused with "true" buffalos, the Asian water buffalo and the African buffalo. However, bison is a Greek word meaning ox-like animal, while buffalo originated with the French fur trappers who called these massive beasts bœufs, meaning ox or bullock—so both names and buffalo, have a similar meaning; the name buffalo is listed in many dictionaries as an acceptable name for American bison. Samuel de Champlain applied the term buffalo to the bison in 1616, after seeing skins and a drawing shown to him by members of the Nipissing First Nation, who said they travelled forty days to trade with another nation who hunted the animals.
In English usage, the term buffalo dates to 1625 in North America, when the term was first recorded for the American mammal. It thus has a much longer history than the term bison, first recorded in 1774; the American bison is closely related to the European bison. In Plains Indian languages in general and female buffaloes are distinguished, with each having a different designation rather than there being a single generic word covering both sexes. Thus: in Arapaho: bii, henéécee in Lakota: pté, tȟatȟáŋka Such a distinction is not a general feature of the language, so is due to the special significance of the buffalo in Plains Indian life and culture. A bison has a shaggy, dark-brown winter coat, a lighter-weight, lighter-brown summer coat; as is typical in ungulates, the male bison is larger than the female and, in some cases, can be heavier. Plains bison are in the smaller range of sizes, wood bison in the larger range. Head-rump lengths range from 2 to 2.8 m long and the tail adding 30 to 43 cm or up to 65 cm.
Heights at withers in the species can range from 152 to 186 cm for B. b. bison while B. b. athabascae reaches over 2 m. Weights can range from 318 to 1,000 kg Typical weight ranges in the species were reported as 460 to 988 kg in males and 360 to 544 kg in females, the lowest weights representing typical weight around the age of sexual maturity at 2 to 3 years of age. Mature bulls tend to be larger than cows. Cow weights have had reported medians of 450 to 495 kg, with one small sample averaging 479 kg, whereas bulls may weigh a median of 730 kg with an average from a small sample of 765 kg; the heaviest wild bull recorded weighed 1,270 kg. When raised in captivity and farmed for meat, the bison can grow unnaturally heavy and the largest semidomestic bison weighed 1,724 kg; the heads and forequarters are massive, both sexes have short, curved horns that can grow up to 2 ft long, which they use in fighting for status within the herd and for defense. Bison are grazing on the grasses and sedges of the North American prairies.
Their daily schedule involves two-hour periods of grazing and cud chewing moving to a new location to graze again. Sexually mature young bulls may try to start mating with cows by the age of two or three years, but if more mature bulls are present, they may not be able to compete until they reach five years of age. For the first two months of life, calves are lighter in color than mature bison. One rare condition is the white buffalo, in which the calf turns white. Although they are superficially similar, the American and European bison exhibit a number of physical and behavioral differences. Adult American bison are heavier on average because of their less rangy build, have shorter legs, which render them shorter at the shoulder. American bison tend to graze more, browse less
Brown trout
The brown trout is a European species of salmonid fish, introduced into suitable environments globally. It includes both purely freshwater populations, referred to as the riverine ecotype, Salmo trutta morpha fario, a lacustrine ecotype, S. trutta morpha lacustris called the lake trout, as well as anadromous forms known as the sea trout, S. trutta morpha trutta. The latter migrates to the oceans for much of its life and returns to fresh water only to spawn. Sea trout in the Ireland and Britain have many regional names: sewin in Wales, finnock in Scotland, peal in the West Country, mort in North West England, white trout in Ireland; the lacustrine morph of brown trout is most potamodromous, migrating from lakes into rivers or streams to spawn, although evidence indicates stocks spawn on wind-swept shorelines of lakes. S. trutta morpha fario forms stream-resident populations in alpine streams, but sometimes in larger rivers. Anadromous and nonanadromous morphs. What determines whether or not they migrate remains unknown.
The scientific name of the brown trout is Salmo trutta. The specific epithet trutta derives from the Latin trutta, meaning "trout". Behnke relates that the brown trout was the first species of trout described in the 1758 edition of Systema Naturae by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus. Systema Naturae established the system of binomial nomenclature for animals. Salmo trutta was used to describe sea-run forms of brown trout. Linnaeus described two other brown trout species in 1758. Salmo fario was used for riverine forms. Salmo lacustris was used for lake-dwelling forms; the native range of brown trout extends from northern Norway and White Sea tributaries in Russia in the Arctic Ocean to the Atlas Mountains in North Africa. The western limit of their native range is Iceland in the north Atlantic, while the eastern limit is in Aral Sea tributaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Brown trout have been introduced into suitable environments around the world, including North and South America, Australasia and South and East Africa.
Introduced brown trout have established self-sustaining, wild populations in many introduced countries. The first introductions were in Australia in 1864 when 300 of 1500 brown trout eggs from the River Itchen survived a four-month voyage from Falmouth, Cornwall, to Melbourne on the sailing ship Norfolk. By 1866, 171 young brown trout were surviving in a Plenty River hatchery in Tasmania. Thirty-eight young trout were released in the river, a tributary of the River Derwent in 1866. By 1868, the Plenty River hosted a self-sustaining population of brown trout which became a brood source for continued introduction of brown trout into Australian and New Zealand rivers. Successful introductions into the Natal and Cape Provinces of South Africa took place in 1890 and 1892, respectively. By 1909, brown trout were established in the mountains of Kenya; the first introductions into the Himalayas in northern India took place in 1868, by 1900, brown trout were established in Kashmir and Madras. The first introductions in Canada occurred in 1883 in Newfoundland and continued up until 1933.
The only Canadian regions without brown trout are Northwest Territories. Introductions into South America began in 1904 in Argentina. Brown trout are now established in Chile and the Falklands. In the 1950s and 1960s, Edgar Albert de la Rue, a French geologist, began the introduction of several species of salmonids on the remote Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Of the seven species introduced, only brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis, brown trout survived to establish wild populations. Sea-run forms of brown trout exceeding 20 lb are caught by local anglers on a regular basis; the first introductions into the U. S. started in 1883 when Fred Mather, a New York pisciculturist and angler, under the authority of the U. S. Fish Commissioner, Spencer Baird, obtained brown trout eggs from a Baron Lucius von Behr, president of the German Fishing Society; the von Behr brown trout came from both mountain streams and large lakes in the Black Forest region of Baden-Württemberg. The original shipment of "von Behr" brown trout eggs were handled by three hatcheries, one on Long Island, the Cold Spring Hatchery operated by Mather, one in Caledonia, New York operated by pisciculturalist Seth Green, other hatchery in Northville, Michigan.
Additional shipments of "von Behr" brown trout eggs arrived in 1884. In 1885, brown trout eggs from Loch Leven, arrived in New York; these "Loch Leven" brown trout were distributed to the same hatcheries. Over the next few years, additional eggs from Scotland and Germany were shipped to U. S. hatcheries. Behnke believed all life forms of brown trout—anadromous and lacustrine—were imported into the U. S. and intermingled genetically to create what he calls the American generic brown trout and a single subspecies the North European brown trout. In April 1884, the U. S. Fish Commission released 4900 brown trout fry into the Baldwin River, a tributary of the Pere Marquette River in Michigan; this was the first release of brown trout into U. S. waters. Between 1884 and 1890, brown trout were introduced into suitable habitats throughout the U. S. By 1900, 38 states and two territories had received stocks of brown trout, their adaptability resulted in most of these introductions establishing wild, self-sustaining populations.
The fish is not considered to be endangered, although, in some cases, individual stocks are under various degrees of stress through habitat degradation and artificial propagation leading to introgression. Increased frequency of excessively warm water
Rainbow trout
The rainbow trout is a trout and species of salmonid native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia and North America. The steelhead is an anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or Columbia River redband trout that returns to fresh water to spawn after living two to three years in the ocean. Freshwater forms that have been introduced into the Great Lakes and migrate into tributaries to spawn are called steelhead. Adult freshwater stream rainbow trout average between 1 and 5 lb, while lake-dwelling and anadromous forms may reach 20 lb. Coloration varies based on subspecies and habitat. Adult fish are distinguished by a broad reddish stripe along the lateral line, from gills to the tail, most vivid in breeding males. Wild-caught and hatchery-reared forms of this species have been transplanted and introduced for food or sport in at least 45 countries and every continent except Antarctica. Introductions to locations outside their native range in the United States, Southern Europe, New Zealand and South America have damaged native fish species.
Introduced populations may affect native species by preying on them, out-competing them, transmitting contagious diseases, or hybridizing with related species and subspecies, thus reducing genetic purity. The rainbow trout is included in the list of the top 100 globally invasive species. Nonetheless, other introductions into waters devoid of any fish species or with depleted stocks of native fish have created sport fisheries such as the Great Lakes and Wyoming's Firehole River; some local populations of specific subspecies, or in the case of steelhead, distinct population segments, are listed as either threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The steelhead is the official state fish of Washington; the scientific name of the rainbow trout is Oncorhynchus mykiss. The species was named by German naturalist and taxonomist Johann Julius Walbaum in 1792 based on type specimens from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia. Walbaum's original species name, was derived from the local Kamchatkan name used for the fish, mykizha.
The name of the genus is from the Greek onkos and rynchos, in reference to the hooked jaws of males in the mating season. Sir John Richardson, a Scottish naturalist, named a specimen of this species Salmo gairdneri in 1836 to honor Meredith Gairdner, a Hudson's Bay Company surgeon at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River who provided Richardson with specimens. In 1855, William P. Gibbons, the curator of Geology and Mineralogy at the California Academy of Sciences, found a population and named it Salmo iridia corrected to Salmo irideus; these names faded once it was determined that Walbaum's description of type specimens was conspecific and therefore had precedence. In 1989, morphological and genetic studies indicated that trout of the Pacific basin were genetically closer to Pacific salmon than to the Salmos – brown trout or Atlantic salmon of the Atlantic basin. Thus, in 1989, taxonomic authorities moved the rainbow and other Pacific basin trout into the genus Oncorhynchus. Walbaum's name had precedence, so the species name Oncorhynchus mykiss became the scientific name of the rainbow trout.
The previous species names irideus and gairdneri were adopted as subspecies names for the coastal rainbow and Columbia River redband trout, respectively. Anadromous forms of the coastal rainbow trout or redband trout are known as steelhead. Subspecies of Oncorhynchus mykiss are listed below as described by fisheries biologist Robert J. Behnke. Resident freshwater rainbow trout adults average between 1 and 5 lb in riverine environments, while lake-dwelling and anadromous forms may reach 20 lb. Coloration varies between regions and subspecies. Adult freshwater forms are blue-green or olive green with heavy black spotting over the length of the body. Adult fish have a broad reddish stripe along the lateral line, from gills to the tail, most pronounced in breeding males; the caudal fin is only mildly forked. Lake-dwelling and anadromous forms are more silvery in color with the reddish stripe completely gone. Juvenile rainbow trout display parr marks typical of most salmonid juveniles. In some redband and golden trout forms parr marks are retained into adulthood.
Some coastal rainbow trout and Columbia River redband trout populations and cutbow hybrids may display reddish or pink throat markings similar to cutthroat trout. In many regions, hatchery-bred trout can be distinguished from native trout via fin clips. Fin clipping the adipose fin is a management tool used to identify hatchery-reared fish. Rainbow trout, including steelhead forms spawn in early to late spring when water temperatures reach at least 42 to 44 °F; the maximum recorded lifespan for a rainbow trout is 11 years. Freshwater resident rainbow trout inhabit and spawn in small to moderately large, well oxygenated, shallow rivers with gravel bottoms, they are native to the alluvial or freestone streams that are typical tributaries of the Pacific basin, but introduced rainbow trout have established wild, self-sustaining populations in other river types such as bedrock and spring creeks. Lake resident rainbow trout are found in moderately deep, cool lakes with
Grey partridge
The grey partridge known as the English partridge, Hungarian partridge, or hun, is a gamebird in the pheasant family Phasianidae of the order Galliformes, gallinaceous birds. The scientific name is the Latin for "partridge", is itself derived from Ancient Greek perdix; the grey partridge is 28 -- 32 cm long, brown-backed, with grey flanks and chest. The belly is white marked with a large chestnut-brown horse-shoe mark in males, in many females. Hens lay up to twenty eggs in a ground nest; the nest is in the margin of a cereal field, most winter wheat. The only major and constant difference between the sexes is the so-called cross of Lorraine on the tertiary coverts of females—these being marked with two transverse bars, as opposed to the one in males; these are present after around 16 weeks of age. Young grey partridges are yellow-brown and lack the distinctive face and underpart markings; the song is a harsh kieerr-ik, when disturbed, like most of the gamebirds, it flies a short distance on rounded wings calling rick rick rick as it rises.
They are a seed-eating species, but the young in particular take insects as an essential protein supply. During the first 10 days of life, the young can only digest insects; the parents lead their chicks to the edges of cereal fields. Widespread and common throughout much of its range, the grey partridge is evaluated as "of Least Concern" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. However, it has suffered a serious decline in the UK, in 2015 appeared on the "Birds of Conservation Concern" Red List; this partridge breeds on farmland across most of Europe into western Asia, has been introduced into Canada, United States, South Africa and New Zealand. A popular gamebird in vast areas of North America, it is known as "Hungarian partridge" or just "hun", they are a non-migratory terrestrial species, form flocks outside the breeding season. Though common and not threatened, it appears to be declining in numbers in some areas of intensive cultivation such as Great Britain due to a loss of breeding habitat and food supplies.
Their numbers have fallen in these areas by as much as 85% in the last 25 years. Efforts are being made in Great Britain by organizations such as the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust to halt this decline by creating conservation headlands. In 1995, it was nominated a Biodiversity Action Plan species. In Ireland, it is now confined to the Lough Boora reserve in County Offaly where a recent conservation project has succeeded in boosting its numbers to 900, raising hopes that it may be reintroduced to the rest of Ireland. There are eight recognized subspecies: P. p. perdix – nominate, found in the British Isles and southern Scandinavia to Italy and the Balkans P. p. armoricana Hartert, 1917 – found locally in France P. p. sphagnetorum – found in the moors of the northern part of the Netherlands and northwest Germany P. p. hispaniensis Reichenow, 1892: Iberian partridge, found from central Pyrenees to northeast Portugal P. p. italica Hartert, 1917 – Italian grey partridge, extinct P. p. lucida – eastern grey partridge, found from Finland east to Ural Mountains and south to Black Sea and northern Caucasus P. p. canescens Burturlin, 1906 – southern grey partridge, found from Turkey east to the South Caucasus and northwest Iran P. p. robusta Homeyer and Tancré, 1883 – southeastern grey partridge, found from the Ural Mountains to southwestern Siberia and northwestern China BirdLife species factsheet for Perdix perdix Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust - Grey Partridge "Grey partridge media".
Internet Bird Collection. Gray Partridge Species Account – Cornell Lab of Ornithology Ageing and sexing by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze Feathers of Grey partridge
Mission Mountains
This article is for the mountain range in Montana. For the small mountain range in British Columbia, Canada known as Mission Mountain, see Mission Ridge. For the summit in California see Mission Peak; the Mission Mountains or Mission Range are a range of the Rocky Mountains located in northwestern Montana in the United States. They lie chiefly in Lake County and Missoula County and are south and east of Flathead Lake and west of the Swan Range. On the east side of the range is the Swan River Valley and on the west side the Mission Valley; the highest point in the Mission Mountains is McDonald Peak 9,820 feet. The range is named for its proximity to the Jesuit St. Ignatius Mission established in the mid-19th century in what is today St. Ignatius, Montana; the Mission Mountains are composed of what is called "Belt Rock" from the Belt Supergroup. The sedimentary rocks in this group formed between 1.4 billion years ago in the Belt Basin. The circular basin collected sediments from surrounding areas for millions of years.
The basin was buried and re-exposed through the collision of several tectonic plates around 80 million years ago. Much of the Belt Rock found in the Mission Mountains is a crumbly sedimentary rock known as mudstone; the mudstone in the Belt supergroup is characterized by mudcracks, which points to it being formed while wet, drying and being flooded with new wet material that dried and cracked. Most of the rock in the Mission Mountains hails from the end of the Proterozoic Eon, towards the end of what is called Precambrian time; because they are so old, the only evidence of life in the rocks are algae blooms and basic plant fossils. These organisms played, the important role of converting carbon dioxide in the water into oxygen, pumped into the acidic and poorly oxygenated atmosphere; the color of the mudstone in the Missions has much to do with the presence of the mineral hematite during the its formation. Hematite is formed by iron particles' reaction to oxygen in the atmosphere. Green and gray stones found in the Missions were most formed in deep water, the red in more shallow water.
Ripple marks can be found in much of the rock. The features of the Mission Mountains reflect work of the last few ice ages, the latest of those being just over 10,000 years ago, but the range is the product of a much longer story, one that can be started with the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent. As the continents began to spread out, the North American Plate inched westward, grinding over and against the Pacific Plate as it went; this subduction of the Pacific Plate caused the rise of the Rocky Mountains and thereby the Missions. About 66 million years ago, this process of uplift began to slow; this time, called the Cenozoic Era, is. Looking at the globe at that time, the continents would have been about where they are today and plant and animal life would be recognizable. At that time, the deep valleys of western Montana would not yet have formed; this development is believed to have come about 40 million years ago as the extensional forces that cause the uplift of the Rockies began to cause the crust to thin and crack.
Near-vertical faults formed uniformly throughout the region, most trending northwest to southeast. The blocks broke up, some dropping and creating valleys like the Flathead and the Swan. In all, the whole process took around 100 million years. Three million years ago, at the end of the Cenozoic Era, western Montana would have been full of tall mountains, but it was the next geologic process that made them what they are today. Large glaciers began to form in the area 2–3 million years ago. Since ending just 10,000 years ago, the Mission Mountains and their surroundings were shaped by water; the formation of the Flathead Lobe of the Alberta Cordilleran ice sheet is what set this history into motion. At its thickest points, the Flathead Lobe glacier may have extended 4,000 feet above the valley floor; the glacier reached hundreds of miles down the Rocky Mountain Trench, ending as far south as St. Ignatius, Montana. At the northern end of the range, the glacier flow split, part flowing into the Swan Valley.
A view of the area at that time would have been majestic, with large glaciers flowing around both sides and over the range. Smaller glaciers would have flowed out of the mountains and joined the larger one in the valley; this explains. These processes gave the Mission Mountains their distinct shapes; the many three-sided peaks, called horns or pyramidal peaks, the knife-like ridges of the southern half of the range are results of the heavy mountain glaciation. The northern half of the range was rolled over by the Flathead Lobe, much like a huge moving ice sheet; this led to the more rounded features of the northern half of the range. The Pleistocene was a time of quick sculpting in the Mission Mountains, and though that epoch has ended, the erosion continues. Rain, ice and other forces continue to work at the alpine landscape of the Missions. Recorded human contact with the Mission Mountains began with the native peoples thousands of years ago and runs up to the present; the Salish and Kootenai people have traditionally used the mountains as a place for fishing, berry-picking and for performing sacred ceremonies.
The first major outside attention to the Mission Mountains came in the 1920s. Forest service employee Theodore Shoemaker led several parties of visitors
Lake trout
Lake trout is a freshwater char living in lakes in northern North America. Other names for it include mackinaw, lake char, touladi and grey trout. In Lake Superior, it can be variously known as siscowet and lean; the lake trout is prized both as a food fish. Those caught with dark coloration may be called mud hens. From a zoogeographical perspective, lake trout have a narrow distribution, they are native only to the northern parts of North America, principally Canada, but Alaska and, to some extent, the northeastern United States. Lake trout have been introduced into non-native waters in North America and into many other parts of the world Europe, but into South America and certain parts of Asia. Although lake trout were introduced into Yellowstone National Park's Shoshone and Heart lakes in the 1890s, they were illegally or accidentally introduced into Yellowstone Lake in the 1980s where they are now considered invasive. Lake trout are the largest of the chars; the average length is 24–36 inches.
The largest caught on a rod and reel according to the IGFA was 72 pounds, caught in Great Bear Lake in 1995 with a length of 59 inches. Lake trout inhabit oxygen-rich waters, they are pelagic during the period of summer stratification in dimictic lakes living at depths of 20–60 m. The lake trout is typical of oligotrophic waters, it is very late to mature. Populations are susceptible to overfishing. Many native lake trout populations have been damaged through the combined effects of hatchery stocking and over harvest. There are three subspecies of lake trout. There is the common lake trout, the siscowet lake trout, the less common rush lake trout; some lakes do not have pelagic forage fish during the period of summer stratification. In these lakes, lake trout take on a life history known as planktivory. Lake trout in planktivorous populations are abundant, grow slowly and mature at small sizes. In those lakes that do contain deep-water forage, lake trout become piscivorous. Piscivorous lake trout grow much more mature at a larger size and are less abundant.
Notwithstanding differences in abundance, the density of biomass of lake trout is consistent in similar lakes, regardless of whether the lake trout populations they contain are planktivorous or piscivorous. In Lake Superior, common lake trout and siscowet lake trout live together. Common lake trout tend to stay in shallower waters. Common lake trout are slimmer than the fat siscowet. Siscowet numbers have become depressed over the years due to a combination of the extirpation of some of the fish's deep water coregonine prey and to overexploitation. Siscowet tend to grow large and fat and attracted great commercial interest in the last century, their populations have rebounded since 1970, with one estimate putting the number in Lake Superior at 100 million. Lake trout are known to hybridize in nature with the brook trout, but such hybrids, known as "splake", are sterile but self-sustaining populations exist in some lakes. Splake are artificially propagated in hatcheries, stocked into lakes in an effort to provide sport-fishing opportunities.
Lake trout were fished commercially in the Great Lakes until lampreys and pollution extirpated or reduced the stocks. Commercial fisheries still exist in some areas of the Great Lakes and smaller lakes in northern Canada. Commercial fishing by Ojibwe for Lake Trout in the Lake Superior is permitted under various treaties and regulated by the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission; the specific epithet namaycush derives from namekush, a form of the word used in some inland Southern East Cree communities in referring to this species of fish. Other variations found in East Cree are kûkamâw and kûkamesh. Similar cognate words are found in Ojibwe: namegos = "lake trout". Geneva, New York claims the title "Lake Trout Capital of the World," and holds an annual lake trout fishing derby. Fishbase description of Lake trout Lake trout
Coot
Coots are small water birds that are members of the rail family, Rallidae. They constitute the genus Fulica, the name being the Latin for "coot". Coots have predominantly black plumage, and—unlike many rails—they are easy to see swimming in open water, they are close relatives of the moorhen. A group of coots may cover. Fulica newtonii Milne-Edwards, 1867 – Mascarene coot Fulica chathamensis Forbes, 1892 – Chatham Island coot Fulica prisca Hamilton, 1893 – New Zealand coot Fulica infelix Brodkorb, 1961 – Fulica shufeldti – a subspecies of Fulica americana. Many, but not all, have white on the under tail; the featherless shield gave rise to the expression "as bald as a coot," which the Oxford English Dictionary cites in use as early as 1430. Like other rails, they have lobed toes that are well adapted to soft, uneven surfaces. Coots can walk and run vigorously, they tend to have short, rounded wings and are weak fliers, though northern species can cover long distances. The greatest species variety occurs in South America, the genus originated there.
They are common in North America. Coot species that migrate do so at night; the American coot has been observed in Britain and Ireland, while the Eurasian coot is found across Asia and parts of Africa. In southern Louisiana, the coot is referred to by the French name "poule d'eau", which translates into English as "water hen" or "moorhen". Coots are omnivorous, eating plant material, but small animals and eggs, they are aggressively territorial during the breeding season, but are otherwise found in sizeable flocks on the shallow vegetated lakes they prefer. Chick mortality occurs due to starvation rather than predation as coots have difficulty feeding a large family of hatchlings on the tiny shrimp and insects that they collect. Most chicks die in the first 10 days after hatching, when they are most dependent on adults for food. Coots can be brutal to their own young under pressure such as the lack of food, after about three days they start attacking their own chicks when they beg for food. After a short while, these attacks concentrate on the weaker chicks, who give up begging and die.
The coot may raise only two or three out of nine hatchlings. In this attacking behaviour, the parents are said to "tousle" their young; this can result in the death of the chick. Coot videos on the Internet Bird Collection Beach, Chandler B. ed.. "Coot". The New Student's Reference Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co
