THE WINTERING BEHAVIOR OF COOT FULICA-ATRA L. AT CORK-LOUGH, SOUTH-WEST IRELAND

The activity pattern of a flock of coot Fulica atra at Cork Lough was studied during daylight hours over the winter of 1993/4 using instanta neous scan sampling. As an unknown proportion of the flock was out of sight at any time, the data are based only on visible birds. Swimming was the most important activity of visible birds, representing 38% of daylight hours, followed by feeding (36%). Surface feeding was the mai n foraging strategy, accounting for about 34% of time spent feeding du ring daylight hours. There was significant variation in activities bot h over the day and over the winter. Visible coot spent most of their d aylight hours (94.2 +/- 0.7%) on water with a temporal variation in th e mean percentage numbers bring observed. Air temperature had no signi ficant effect on behaviour. Increased precipitation resulted in an inc rease in resting and a corresponding decrease in the time devoted to p reening. An increase in wind speeds was seen to result in an increase in grazing intensity.