An advertisement for the 1994 World Cup, fast food wrappers, COVID-19 masks—what birds used to build their nests reflects a world with more plastic. A coot bird in London on a nest made of twigs and ...

I’ve often wondered how the name of a waterbird — the American coot — became the pejorative “old coot” for a crotchety old man. But while watching rafts of coots recently at the Anahuac National ...