American coot eating sidewalk worms.

I photographed this in Leduc, Alberta, after a day of heavy rain.

At the ripe old age of 66, I can say that I have seen some odd things in my time.  But I was unprepared for the truly strange sight of a coot walking along a flooded sidewalk, eating drowning worms as it went.

It has been a wet summer in Alberta this year.  Rain, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail the size of baseballs have plagued the province.  And as each of us knows, worms come out of the soil when it gets saturated in order to breathe.  That's because an earthworm gets its oxygen directly through the skin, and water tends not to hold much oxygen.  

And so, as I was walking around the Leduc reservoir, I noted a plethora of earthworms.  They were on the sidewalk, they were on the lawn, in dirt, underfoot, and in puddles.  There was a group of boys, armed with a tin can and fishing gear, collecting the largest ones they could find. The excitement in their raised voices was proportional to the size of the worms they found on their search.  But it wasn't just the boys who discovered an annelid smorgasbord.  A few birds joined in the fray as well.  Chief among them was a coot.

If you read up on coots, you will soon discover that they are primarily vegetarians.  I have seen plenty of them bobbing for various aquatic plant life.  And they are not limited to plants in the water either, they are known to eat terrestrial foliage as well.  In their unending search for food, they will also take insects and juvenile vertebrates such as tadpoles, although I have never witnessed that.  What I can say, for sure, is that they eat worms.

Now, I can't see a coot hunting for worms the way a robin does.  And I don't imagine that these segmented creatures form a large part of their diet.  However, if presented with the opportunity, I'm sure that such a bird would find them quite desirable.  Easy to eat, nice and soft, and they practically crawl their way down to the stomach.  And so, on this particular day, this American coot was blessed with a singular opportunity.  In fact, if it could talk, I'm sure it would have turned to those boys I mentioned earlier, and in its loudest voice proclaim, "Hey guys, you should see the one I found!"

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com