Mad as a coot

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I present to you a couple of male coots, ripping strips off one another because the one on the right had spoken inappropriately to the girlfriend of the one on the left. If the girlfriend had an opinion about this behaviour, she kept it to herself.

I went to Compton Verney this morning in the hope of seeing some great crested grebes, and found one on the north lake, which a local photographer who's been checking the site regularly told me is newly arrived back from wherever it has spent the winter. There's some mystery around the winter movement of great crested grebes, but the RSPB states that many move to large lakes and reservoirs, or even out onto the sea, which suggests that they're avoiding water that might freeze, as Compton Verney lake is wont to do. This would make sense, because their shape makes them slow and ungainly on land, which puts them at high risk of predation. Wherever they move to, it's good to know that they're now sensing spring and making their way back home. For several years there have been two pairs of great crested grebes on the lake here, occupying territories on either side of the bridge, so with luck there should be three more arrivals over the next couple of weeks.

The grebe was looking fabulous in its breeding plumage, but it was nervy and wasn't giving especially good photo opportunities, though I did manage the odd reasonable image. I was well into my second hour of stalking it along the edge of the lake, when I was distracted by a racket that I realised had been going on at intervals for quite a while, and which turned out to be the sound of coots knocking seven bells out of each other. On further investigation I discovered that there were five coots a little way north of the reed bed the grebe was favouring, two of whom were repeatedly turning on a third and harassing it quite viciously.

Intrigued now, I watched with more attention, and over time worked out that there were two apparently bonded pairs, which were mainly pootling around looking for food, but whenever the fifth bird got too close to them one from each pair would chase and attack it. My assumption that the two attackers were the male halves of the couples, and the fifth bird was a spare male looking for a mate, was reinforced by the fact that the interloper kept determinedly approaching the paired birds, making a gentle and enticing clucking noise, even after he'd come off worst in multiple encounters with the 'attached' males, and was bleeding from a wound to his forehead shield. On three separate occasions I saw one of the attackers get him right under the water and apparently try to hold him there, but each time he managed to break free, burst up through the surface and escape. The other thing I noticed was that of the two aggressors, most of the attacking seemed to be being done by one especially angry and violent bird, while the other looked to be mainly in the business of egging on his mate. It was all rather East Enders.

I came home with a few great crested grebe portraits, and a ridiculous number of shots of chasing, fleeing, and fighting coots. Of the latter I've picked a dozen or so (including this one) that span a single confrontation, and posted them to my Facebook page. If you look through them you should be able to spot the Young Pretender fairly easily, even though he's sometimes on the left of shot and sometimes on the right, by the fact that the edge of his shield is pink where blood from a wound he picked up earlier has run down it. You'll also see what I mean about the second aggressor, who arrives a couple of frames after this photo and, like the bully's sidekick, does a lot of shouting but not much else.