Coots live a frantic, noisy and sometimes frankly aggressive life and the breeding season is full of territorial disputes, violent confrontations with stabbing bill and flailing legs and quite moments of delicately tending their young brood after brood interspersed with unexplainable infanticide....

Autumn is upon us and the more social side reveals itself with great rafts of coal black bodies covering our shallow reservoirs, lakes and park ponds where they collectively dive to the bottom to drag up mats of weed (often with opportunistic and vaguely parasitic Gadwall waiting for free greenery).

Even at Rainham we currently have about 170 on Aveley Pool all paddling around as if being friends with your neighbours was a normal state of mind....

At peace... (Tori Andrews)