When I approached my pond to take the picture of the Blueflag blooming, I scared up a bird that was near the flowers and although the bird floated like a duck, it wasn’t a duck as it doesn’t have webbed feet. Belonging to the rail family, the American Coot walks like a chicken but swims like a duck and is also called a mud hen. They have big feet with lobed toes and to take flight, the clumsy flier must patter across the water to get airborne which is probably why it didn’t fly off like the ducks do when I go near the pond.
American Coot
