1st record of American Coot for Madeira

The first month of 2012 brought to Madeira a 1st record of American Coot Fulica americana! The bird was seen on Friday, the 20th of January 2012 at Lugar de Baixo pond. It was not expectable to have american vagrants in Madeira by this time of year as since early December the predominant wind has been from East and this winter we still did not get any westerly storm... Anyway, the bird was well observed and photographed by Catarina & Hugo and, as one can see from the photos, it had a small red top of frontal shield, white markings on the tail, a black stripe on the bill and the size of the bird was a bit bigger than the Eurasian coots that were around.