Murderous coots (1 Viewer)

[forthbirder]

Another soul crushing day in the office in Edinburgh, staring at the computer, enlivened just now by the sight of dozens of swifts hawking for insects at eye level from the office window.
Yesterday, on a visit to Kinghorn Loch, was sad to see some disturbing behaviour from the local coots. A pair of adults, with two chicks, were on the loch, diving and catching numerous small creatures. However, they were only feeding one of the chicks, the other one they ignored at first and then turned on it, pecking it mercilessly until the poor wee soul was dead. I am at a loss to account for this behaviour, as there was clearly plenty of food in the loch for both chicks. The only idea I can come up with was that this was not one of their own chicks, but one from another nest which had lost its parents.Mark.

 

[Sancho]

Another soul crushing day in the office in Edinburgh, staring at the computer, enlivened just now by the sight of dozens of swifts hawking for insects at eye level from the office window.
Yesterday, on a visit to Kinghorn Loch, was sad to see some disturbing behaviour from the local coots. A pair of adults, with two chicks, were on the loch, diving and catching numerous small creatures. However, they were only feeding one of the chicks, the other one they ignored at first and then turned on it, pecking it mercilessly until the poor wee soul was dead. I am at a loss to account for this behaviour, as there was clearly plenty of food in the loch for both chicks. The only idea I can come up with was that this was not one of their own chicks, but one from another nest which had lost its parents.Mark.

Bizarre...I imagine you're right about the motive for the murder, it's very hard to separate emotion from what we see going on in nature.

 

[Xenospiza]

Coots are well-known for this behaviour. They start with four chicks, but soon get "stressed" and start to kill off their own offspring, to end up with one or two (most likely the strongest).

 

[abagguley]

There's some (rather distressing) footage of them doing this in one of the wildlife documentaries, but I'm b*ggered if I can remember which one. (It might be Attenborough's Life of Birds.)

The coots have also been 'getting rid of' the LRP eggs on my local patch. Didn't see this myself, so I'm not sure exactly what they did - presumably they're either breaking them or knocking them into the water.

Adrian

 

[Sancho]

That is even more bizarre than I thought. Infanticide as a manner of evolutionary selection is really hard to get one´s head around; does it exist in any other birds? I mean, I know it has occurred in humans (the Spartans?) but coots killing their own young...it seems like an awful waste of resources rearing them in the first place, only to kill them in favour of the one the parents deem strongest. Also, why kill them? Why not just abandon them to the Marsh Harriers (at least they'd be protein)?

 

[forthbirder]

Thanks for enlightening me folks. I was aware that fratricide is common amongst raptor chicks, even cannabilism (as witnessed amongst the barn owl chicks on Springwatch on Monday night), but I had no idea that infanticide occured. I'd be interested to know of any other species which exhibits this behaviour. Cheers, Mark.