Our Toledo Mud Hens baseball team is back for the season, and so are the American coots, commonly called mud hens, the bird that gives our famous baseball team its unique name.
Coots are unique looking water birds that flourish and breed in our local marshes. See them in big numbers right now in such places as Howard Marsh Metropark, Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge and Magee Marsh State Wildlife Area.
Mud hens are often referred to as ducks, but they’re a water-loving member of the rail family. Check their feet and note that they’re not webbed like a duck’s, but equipped with long bizarre-looking lobed toes. Those toes give them extra traction when paddling, and when they perform their classic frenetic watery takeoffs that require skittering and splashing to get airborne.
Coots spend a great deal of time out of the water, so they are often observed standing on mud flats and muskrat cabins, for example.
They’ll be nesting soon. Our coots, aka mud hens, that is.
