American Coots

These American Coots were another group of ducks by the Audubon Park rookery in New Orleans when I was out shooting there a couple weeks ago. I hadn't seen many of these before. Their striking white bills are hard to miss. The group was being rather benign and staying close together with about a half dozen more of their kind -- the group is known as a cover of Coots or a raft of Coots (I found this out from Wikipedia ). They were so dark against the reflecting water that I had to light up the picture considerably to get their red eyes to show (you may need to click on the picture and enlarge it to see that.)

--steve buser