I was birding with a friend at Corcoran today and saw a couple of adult Coots with, what we settled on, was a juvenile Coot. It didn't quite match other juveniles of that size we'd seen before, but we thought perhaps it was just one stage below in development the other examples we had seen.
She mentioned that the beak looked pink (I am red/green colorblind so it was too subtle for me to detect) and I thought it could be a juvenile Gallinule. It seemed a stretch so we moved on. But now that I've looked at photos of other juvenile Gallinules, it very well could be that?? Did we find a Coot couple that adopted an orphaned Gallinule?
Thoughts please! Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, distance and heat interference worked against me.
