Explore #260, 10/26/09.
View On Black
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck... it still might not be a duck. In my research, I learned that Coots are not ducks, but rather swimming rails. Who knew?
The house that I grew up in is only a couple of blocks from the Buena Vista Lagoon, as it is now known. We just called it "the slough" and it used to smell pretty badly (the sewage treatment plant near the other end of it might have had a little to due with that, but we were too young to make the connection), leading us to tease each other about "smelling like a slough". There were lots of "mud hens" in the slough, which is probably why I grew up with a prejudice against them, but it was probably also due to their plainness and my associating them with the smell from the lagoon. I'm beginning to rethink that, though, now that I've seen them up close. There were also lots of Killdeer in the 9-acre field, next to our house, that my grandfather owned, but I've always liked them, because they were one of the first birds that I learned the name of and because I associate them with playing in that field.
