A Bird Out Of Place

Coots are common in inland waterways around me. I know what they look like on land and water. They are, according to The Sibley Guide to Birds, gregarious and dive for aquatic plants in marshy wetlands.

Therefore, a small bird hiding behind a rock at the base of a waterfall at the coast with nothing but a wide rocky beach in one direction and a steep cliff in the other, no other birds in sight but gulls, could not be a coot. Or so I decided. But I was wrong. I don't know why it was where it was, all by itself, but there it was. Another birding lesson learned. A coot is a coot wherever it is.

American Coot