There are several birds here that are "Eurasian," and I was just thinking how that was so interesting because we don't have birds called North and South American at home--but then it dawned on me that we have "American" birds that maybe refer to the Americas, rather than just the USA, so perhaps we do have intercontinental nomenclature for our birds more than I realised.
Anyway, St James Park provided the backdrop for these Eurasian coots, but they are very prolific here, and there are huge flocks of them at that park as well as Battersea Park, and who knows where else. Even at home, while American coots seem to be almost everywhere, usually I'll only see a few of them at a time.
Having mentioned the American coots, they look almost the same as their Eurasian counterparts, but with one noticeable difference: the white part on the beak seems to go all the way up to the forehead on these ones. The ones back home, they have what looks like a red dot midway up the beak near the forehead, and the main part of the forehead is feathers.
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