Sergey Dereliev

A large Rallidae with slaty black plumage and white bill with a frontal plate. Largely distributed across North Africa and Europe, except highest latitudes, and cross Asia and Australia. Migratory in East and North Europe, resident in the rest of Europe.

Season of assessment

B

Population trendDecreasing
Population size
(min-max, best estimate)		2030000-3360000,2590000
Red List categoryNT
Franks, S., Fiedler, W., Arizaga, J., Jiguet, F., Nikolov, B., van der Jeugd, Ambrosini, R, Aizpurua, O., Bairlein, F., Clark, J., Fattorini, N, Hammond, M., Higgins, D, Levering, H., Skellorn, W., Spina, F, Thorup, K. Walker, J., Woodward, I. and Baillie, S.R. (1) (2022) Online Atlas of the movements of European bird populations. https://migrationatlas.org EURING/CMS (1) Principal investigator
Map

Overall Connectivity for Eurasian Coot

The movements are clearly orientated from the NE to the SW, except in the British Isles where movements occur in all directions, so correspond to non-orientated dispersal. Birds from East Europe disperse mostly to the South, including birds from the Black and Caspian Seas. Extralimital recoveries of southern Russian birds from Iran and Sudan. The distribution of recovery distances confirms a short-distance dispersion for the coot, with most recoveries obtained within 500 kilometres from the ringing site.

Recoveries by Condition for Eurasian Coot

Most dead recoveries come from the period 1960-1990, but the large majority are live recoveries, obtained after 2000.

Annual Movements for Eurasian Coot

The movements back to the breeding grounds occur in March and are finished by early April for the North, by mid-April for the East, while birds from other regions gently shift to the NE at the end of March / beginning of April.   In autumn, the first movements are noted at the end of August, and intensify from mid-September onwards, with more arrivals to South-West Europe.

Connectivity by Month by Region for Eurasian Coot

Connectivity by month is best illustrated with birds from the North and East regions. The are all back in the breeding region in very early April, with returns on distant wintering sites mainly from the first decade of October onwards. For birds of Central Europe, the shift to SW Europe and Mediterranean wintering grounds is obvious in March and September. Only birds from South-West Europe have been recovered in North Africa, in all months.

Frédéric Jiguet

References

Statistics Map
N records N individuals N recoveries
Mapped data*
Total available data
*Mapped data include only distant (>= 50 km) recoveries